A common temperature dependence of nutritional demands in ectotherms

LASPOUMADERES, C; MEUNIER, CEDRIC L.; ELSER, J.J. .; MODENUTTI, B

Ecology Letters

John Wiley and Sons Inc

Año: 2022 vol. 25 p. 2189 - 2202

In light of ongoing climate change, it is increasingly important to know hownutritional requirements of ectotherms are affected by changing temperatures.Here, we analyse the wide thermal response of phosphorus (P) requirementsvia elemental gross growth efficiencies of Carbon (C) and P, and the ThresholdElemental Ratios in different aquatic invertebrate ectotherms: the freshwatermodel species Daphnia magna, the marine copepod Acartia tonsa, the marineheterotrophic dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina, and larvae of two populations ofthe marine crab Carcinus maenas. We show that they all share a non-linearcubicthermal response of nutrient requirements. Phosphorus requirements decreasefrom low to intermediate temperatures, increase at higher temperatures anddecrease again when temperature is excessive. This common thermal responseof nutrient requirements is of great importance if we aim to understand or evenpredict how ectotherm communities will react to global warming and nutrient-driveneutrophication.