Climate change impacts on predator-prey relationships – CLIMPREDPREY

The current climatic crisis makes the understanding of its impacts on community functioning all the more urgent. Such an understanding is hampered by the complexity of species relationships. Predator-prey interactions are driven by consumptive and non-consumptive effects. Predators impact prey density through consumptive effects, but their mere presence can lead the prey to change their behaviour and physiology through non-consumptive effects. Such consumptive and non-consumptive effects are key to community dynamics and can be altered by climate. Climate change can increase predator metabolism and energetic demands, and thus their consumption rate. This can in return change prey behaviour and physiology in presence of predators and thus affect their population dynamics. Despite their well-demonstrated importance in ecology and evolution, non-consumptive effects are often ignored when making predictions about future biodiversity. This project aims at understanding how changes in consumptive and non-consumptive effects of predators on prey can contribute to the impacts of climate change on biodiversity. Three work packages make this project: (WP1) understanding how adaptation to warmer climates affect predator and prey thermal physiology, (WP2) understanding the impacts of such adaptation on consumptive and non-consumptive effects, and (WP3) understanding the impacts of climate on the functioning of more complex communities through changes in consumptive and non-consumptive predator-prey interactions. We will take advantage of a long-term natural mesocosm experiment already undertaken, in which invertebrates have been maintained in an ambient and a +2°C warmer climate for several generations, to study the consequences of climate change on predator-prey interactions.