Principal Investigators: Jochen Fründ und Mariella Herberstein

PhD student: Stephanie Schultz 

This subproject investigates how insect and spider communities respond to climate change. In close collaboration with subproject 4.1, trait changes on the community level will be assessed on two levels: changes in the trait mean and distribution due to species turnover (focus of subproject 4.2) and intraspecific trait changes (focus of subproject 4.1).

Alarming declines in insect biodiversity have been observed, but for climate change - one of the key drivers of biodiversity loss - species differ considerably in their responses. While some species decline under warming, others show signs of rapid adaptation or may even newly arrive in a region due to range shifts. We want to understand to what degree these mechanisms may compensate for species losses and provide resilience for ecosystem functioning under climate change. Here, we focus on five arthropod groups with diverse ecological roles and assess the generality of patterns across taxa.

We will use museum collection, historical datasets and new field collections, combining comparison in time with space-for-time comparisons (comparing cool Northern Germany with warm Southern Germany). We expect that across arthropod groups and types of comparisons, with increasing average temperature we observe a shift towards a larger share of species with bright colors, smaller size and higher degree of thermophily (more Southern distribution). We expect this to be broadly similar for geographic and temporal comparisons, but with an incomplete replacement of disappearing (cold-adapted) species by newly arriving (warm-adapted) species. We further expect that the novel communities will come with a reduction in their total interaction niche, suggesting ecological functions at risk. 

In addition to quantifying the importance of climate-change driven adaptation and replacement for overall biodiversity change, this subproject will also lay the foundation for future studies that delve more into detail of the evolutionary potential of arthropods to adapt to climate change.

Foto: Jochen Fründ