Meeting Abstract
Predicting the effects of climate change on species and communities remains a pre-eminent challenge for biologists. Biotic interactions are widely recognized as an important modulator of species’ responses to climate change, but we are only just beginning to appreciate the complexity of ways that both climate can influence a species interaction and that species interactions can influence organismal responses to climate change. The enormous potential numbers of indirect effects any particular species might experience makes it unfeasible to incorporate all of them into predictions of climate change responses for any one species, let alone a whole community; yet, ignoring indirect effects may lead to woefully inaccurate predictions of the effects of climate change. In this talk I will review indirect effects of changing temperatures that have been reported from temperate rocky intertidal systems, with an emphasis on mussel and barnacle communities. I will discuss ways to narrow the multitude of potential indirect effects to a shorter list of more critical effects. By focusing only on those effects that alter a species’ persistence in a system, rather than aspects of individual success, we may be able to generate predictions that accurately incorporate indirect effects.
