Trophic interactions within food webs affect species distributions, coexistence, and provision of ecosystem services but can be strongly impacted by climatic changes. Understanding these impacts is therefore essential for managing ecosystems and sustaining human well-being. Here, we conducted a global synthesis of terrestrial, marine, and freshwater studies to identify key gaps in our knowledge of climate change impacts on food webs and determine whether the areas currently studied are those most likely to be impacted by climate change. We found research suffers from a strong geographic bias, with only 3.5% of studies occurring in the tropics. Importantly, the distribution of sites sampled under projected climate changes was biased-areas with decreases or large increases in precipitation and areas with low magnitudes of temperature change were under-represented. Our results suggest that understanding of climate change impacts on food webs could be broadened by considering more than two trophic levels, responses in addition to species abundance and biomass, impacts of a wider suite of climatic variables, and tropical ecosystems. Most importantly, to enable better forecasts of biodiversity responses to dimate change, we identify critically under-represented geographic regions and climatic conditions which should be prioritized in future research.
1.Univ Copenhagen, Nat Hist Museum Denmark, Ctr Macroecol Evolut & Climate, Univ Pk 15, DK-2100 Copenhagen O, Denmark 2.Univ Helsinki, Fac Biol & Environm Sci, Helsinki, Finland 3.Umea Univ, Dept Ecol & Environm Sci, S-90187 Umea, Sweden 4.Univ Lancaster, Lancaster Environm Ctr, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, England 5.Chicago Bot Garden, Glencoe, IL 60022 USA 6.Inst Marine Res, Ecosyst Proc, Bergen, Norway 7.Lund Univ, Dept Phys Geog & Ecosyst Sci, Solvegatan 12, SE-22362 Lund, Sweden 8.Univ Vermont, Rubenstein Sch Environm & Nat Resources, Burlington, VT USA 9.Univ Vermont, Gund Inst Environm, Burlington, VT USA 10.St Marys Univ, Dept Environm Sci, Halifax, NS, Canada
Recommended Citation:
Cameron, Erin K.,Sundqvist, Maja K.,Keith, Sally A.,et al. Uneven global distribution of food web studies under climate change[J]. ECOSPHERE,2019-01-01,10(3)