Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ClimateWeb (The Effects Of Climate Change on the Web of Life)
Reporting period: 2020-07-01 to 2022-06-30
The overarching goal of ClimateWeb was to explore the effects of climate change across interaction types and environments. Understanding how species interactions are modified as climate change progresses is essential for evaluating how ecosystem services and functions will respond in future scenarios. Moreover, understanding how interventions such as ecosystem restorations influence species interaction is critical for guiding the management of modified ecosystems. This action contributed to the broad picture of the effects of climate change on both the species and the ecosystem services they provide to increase the ability to accurately predict, and manage, emergent scenarios of environmental changes.
The first half of the action was dedicated to data collection on species distributions and interactions and learning how to model the different climate change scenarios, as predicted in the action. The second half of the action was dedicated to the dissemination of results through attendance in three conferences (the Ecological Society of America, the British Ecological Society, and the V Symposium on Ecological Networks) as well as talks at other scientific events and participation in the "Science is Wonderful!" online event. The main results of ClimateWeb thus far were published in two high-impact papers. These results help to promote holistic thinking around the ecological problems that climate change poses and go beyond climate change, on how other extinction-promoting drivers may affect ecological interactions, in addition to climate change. For example, although invasive plants may compete with native plant species, these invasive may also represent important resources for the animals. Thus, the synergies between climate change and invasive species must be considered together when designing restoration efforts since climate change may increase the competitive advantage of invasive species. Moreover, we also show that to fight the negative effects of climate change we must consider not only communities and populations but also individuals, given that the existence of individual specialization may result in individuals having different responses to climate change. Finally, in addition to scientific publications, ClimateWeb deliverables include the publications of open data that include reproducible analysis, as well as the distribution maps for hundreds of plant species and their occurrence probabilities. The successful completion of this proposal provided me with interdisciplinary training and broadened my technical and analytical skills, enabling me to pursue innovative ecological research. Ultimately, we hope that ClimateWeb results will help inform conservation and policy efforts to ensure the long-term functioning of ecological communities, as well as the services they provide.
ClimateWeb helped to provide a more complete picture of the effect of climate change on ecological interactions and the ecosystem services they provide. I hope that the outreach and dissemination activities I performed amplified societal awareness of climate change. Given that climate change is ubiquitous, it is important to understand how it affects other extension drivers, such as the presence of invasive species. The results from Gaiarsa & Bascompte (2022, Ecology Letters) suggest that invasive plant species may also have a positive effect on the animals in the community, whereas the results from Gaiarsa et al. (2022, American Naturalist) highlight the importance of considering the variation across individuals when assessing different extinction drivers such as climate change. Thus, the effects of climate change should be assessed as a whole, including synergies with other detrimental drivers. Moreover, given the fact that climate change is deeply intertwined with all ecological processes, a potential socio-economic impact of ClimateWeb is to help maintain ecosystem services such as pollination.