A common contaminant shifts impacts of climate change on a plant-microbe mutualism: effects of temperature, CO2 and leachate from tire wear particles

AbstractAnthropogenic stressors, such as climate change or chemical pollution, affect individual species and alter species interactions. Moreover, species interactions can modify effects of anthropogenic stressors on interacting species - a process which may vary amongst stressors or stressor combinations. Most ecotoxicological work focuses on single stressors on single species. Here, we test hypotheses about multiple stressors (climate change and tire wear particles) and interacting species, and whether species interactions modify responses. We use duckweed and its microbiome to model responses of plant-microbe interactions. Climate change is occurring globally, and with increasing urbanization, tire wear particles increasingly contaminate road runoff. Their leachate is associated with zinc, PAHs, plastic additives, and other toxic compounds. We crossed perpendicular gradients of temperature and CO2 in a well plate with factorial manipulation of leachate from tire wear particles and presence of duckweed microbiomes. We measured duckweed and microbial growth, duckweed greenness, and plant-microbe growth correlations. We found that tire leachate and warmer temperatures enhanced duckweed and microbial growth, but microbes diminished positive responses in duck-weed, meaning microbiomes became costly for duckweed. These costs of microbiomes were less-than-additive with warming and leachate, and might be caused by leachate-disrupted endocrine signaling in duckweed. We observed reduced greenness at higher CO2 without tire leachate, suggesting a relative increase in plant nutrient demand, and possibly underlying positive plant-microbe growth correlations in these conditions, as microbes presumably increase nutrient availability. However, with tire leachate, growth correlations were never positive, and shifted negative at lower CO2, further suggesting leachate favors mutualism disruption. In summary, while individual stressors of global change can affect individual species, in ecology we know species interact; and in ecotoxicology, we know stressors interact. Our results demonstrate this complexity: multiple stressors can affect species interactions, and species interactions can alter effects of multiple stressors.

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Microplastics shift impacts of climate change on a plant-microbe mutualism: Temperature, CO2, and tire wear particles

Environmental Research ◽

10.1016/j.envres.2021.111727 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 111727

Author(s):

Anna M. O'Brien ◽

Tiago F. Lins ◽

Yaming Yang ◽

Megan E. Frederickson ◽

David Sinton ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Wear Particles ◽

Tire Wear ◽

Impacts Of Climate Change

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Novel communities from climate change

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2012.0238 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 367 (1605) ◽

pp. 2913-2922 ◽

Cited By ~ 106

Author(s):

Miguel Lurgi ◽

Bernat C. López ◽

José M. Montoya

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Species Interactions ◽

Community Dynamics ◽

Size Structure ◽

Species Traits ◽

Ecological Specialization ◽

Community Size ◽

Interacting Species ◽

Distribution Ranges ◽

Body Sizes

Climate change is generating novel communities composed of new combinations of species. These result from different degrees of species adaptations to changing biotic and abiotic conditions, and from differential range shifts of species. To determine whether the responses of organisms are determined by particular species traits and how species interactions and community dynamics are likely to be disrupted is a challenge. Here, we focus on two key traits: body size and ecological specialization. We present theoretical expectations and empirical evidence on how climate change affects these traits within communities. We then explore how these traits predispose species to shift or expand their distribution ranges, and associated changes on community size structure, food web organization and dynamics. We identify three major broad changes: (i) Shift in the distribution of body sizes towards smaller sizes, (ii) dominance of generalized interactions and the loss of specialized interactions, and (iii) changes in the balance of strong and weak interaction strengths in the short term. We finally identify two major uncertainties: (i) whether large-bodied species tend to preferentially shift their ranges more than small-bodied ones, and (ii) how interaction strengths will change in the long term and in the case of newly interacting species.

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Resilience to multiple stressors in an aquatic plant and its microbiome

10.1101/726653 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Anna M. O’Brien ◽

Zhu Hao Yu ◽

Dian-ya Luo ◽

Jason Laurich ◽

Elodie Passeport ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Species Interactions ◽

Microbial Growth ◽

Multiple Stressors ◽

Lemna Minor ◽

Aquatic Organisms ◽

Chloride Salt ◽

Chemical Contaminants ◽

Microbial Inoculation ◽

Conditional Effects ◽

The Common

AbstractPremiseEnvironments are changing rapidly, and outcomes of species interactions, especially mutualisms, are notoriously dependent on the environment. A growing number of studies have investigated responses of mutualisms to anthropogenic changes, yet most studies have focused on nutrient pollution or climate change, and tested single stressors. Relatively little is known about impacts of simultaneous chemical contaminants, which may differ fundamentally from nutrient or climate stressors, and are especially widespread in aquatic habitats.MethodsWe investigated the impacts of two common contaminants on interactions between the common duckweed Lemna minor and its microbiome. Sodium chloride (salt) and benzotriazole (a corrosion inhibitor) negatively affect aquatic organisms individually, yet commonly co-occur in runoff to duckweed-inhabited sites. We tested three L. minor genotypes with and without the culturable portion of their microbiome across field realistic gradients of salt (3 levels) and benzotriazole (4 levels) in a fully factorial experiment (72 treatments), and measured plant and microbial growth.Key ResultsWe found that stressors had conditional effects. Salt decreased both plant and microbial growth, but decreased plant survival more as benzotriazole concentrations increased. In contrast, benzotriazole did not affect microbial abundance, and benefited plants when salt and microbes were absent, perhaps due to the biotrans-formation we observed without salt. Microbes did not ameliorate duckweed stressors, as microbial inoculation increased plant growth, but not at high salt concentrations.ConclusionsOur results suggest that multistressor effects matter when predicting responses of mutualisms to global change, but that mutualisms may not buffer organisms from stressors.

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Global shifts in the phenological synchrony of species interactions over recent decades

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1714511115 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 115 (20) ◽

pp. 5211-5216 ◽

Cited By ~ 92

Author(s):

Heather M. Kharouba ◽

Johan Ehrlén ◽

Andrew Gelman ◽

Kjell Bolmgren ◽

Jenica M. Allen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Species Interactions ◽

Time Series Data ◽

Terrestrial Ecosystems ◽

Series Data ◽

Global Trends ◽

Predator Prey ◽

Interacting Species ◽

Recent Climate ◽

Phenological Shifts

Phenological responses to climate change (e.g., earlier leaf-out or egg hatch date) are now well documented and clearly linked to rising temperatures in recent decades. Such shifts in the phenologies of interacting species may lead to shifts in their synchrony, with cascading community and ecosystem consequences. To date, single-system studies have provided no clear picture, either finding synchrony shifts may be extremely prevalent [Mayor SJ, et al. (2017) Sci Rep 7:1902] or relatively uncommon [Iler AM, et al. (2013) Glob Chang Biol 19:2348–2359], suggesting that shifts toward asynchrony may be infrequent. A meta-analytic approach would provide insights into global trends and how they are linked to climate change. We compared phenological shifts among pairwise species interactions (e.g., predator–prey) using published long-term time-series data of phenological events from aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems across four continents since 1951 to determine whether recent climate change has led to overall shifts in synchrony. We show that the relative timing of key life cycle events of interacting species has changed significantly over the past 35 years. Further, by comparing the period before major climate change (pre-1980s) and after, we show that estimated changes in phenology and synchrony are greater in recent decades. However, there has been no consistent trend in the direction of these changes. Our findings show that there have been shifts in the timing of interacting species in recent decades; the next challenges are to improve our ability to predict the direction of change and understand the full consequences for communities and ecosystems.

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Modelling ecosystem adaptation and dangerous rates of global warming

Emerging Topics in Life Sciences ◽

10.1042/etls20180113 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 3 (2) ◽

pp. 221-231 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Rebecca Millington ◽

Peter M. Cox ◽

Jonathan R. Moore ◽

Gabriel Yvon-Durocher

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Global Warming ◽

Diffusion Rate ◽

Individual Species ◽

Genetic Evolution ◽

Rates Of Change ◽

Rapid Climate Change ◽

Warming Climate ◽

Intraspecies Competition ◽

High Trait

Abstract We are in a period of relatively rapid climate change. This poses challenges for individual species and threatens the ecosystem services that humanity relies upon. Temperature is a key stressor. In a warming climate, individual organisms may be able to shift their thermal optima through phenotypic plasticity. However, such plasticity is unlikely to be sufficient over the coming centuries. Resilience to warming will also depend on how fast the distribution of traits that define a species can adapt through other methods, in particular through redistribution of the abundance of variants within the population and through genetic evolution. In this paper, we use a simple theoretical ‘trait diffusion’ model to explore how the resilience of a given species to climate change depends on the initial trait diversity (biodiversity), the trait diffusion rate (mutation rate), and the lifetime of the organism. We estimate theoretical dangerous rates of continuous global warming that would exceed the ability of a species to adapt through trait diffusion, and therefore lead to a collapse in the overall productivity of the species. As the rate of adaptation through intraspecies competition and genetic evolution decreases with species lifetime, we find critical rates of change that also depend fundamentally on lifetime. Dangerous rates of warming vary from 1°C per lifetime (at low trait diffusion rate) to 8°C per lifetime (at high trait diffusion rate). We conclude that rapid climate change is liable to favour short-lived organisms (e.g. microbes) rather than longer-lived organisms (e.g. trees).

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Microbial Growth with Multiple Stressors

Microbe Magazine ◽

10.1128/microbe.5.110.1 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 110-116

Author(s):

Joan L. Slonczewski ◽

James A. Coker ◽

Shiladitya DasSarma

Keyword(s):

Microbial Growth ◽

Multiple Stressors

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TIRE-WEAR PARTICLES AS A MAJOR COMPONENT OF MICROPLASTICS IN THE ENVIRONMENT

10.1130/abs/2018am-319219 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Reto Gieré ◽

◽

Frank Sommer ◽

Volker Dietze ◽

Anja Baum ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Wear Particles ◽

Tire Wear

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The importance of species interactions in eco-evolutionary community dynamics under climate change

Nature Communications ◽

10.1038/s41467-021-24977-x ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Anna Åkesson ◽

Alva Curtsdotter ◽

Anna Eklöf ◽

Bo Ebenman ◽

Jon Norberg ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Species Interactions ◽

Community Dynamics ◽

Evolutionary Dynamics ◽

Negative Impact ◽

Trophic Levels ◽

Temperature Dependent ◽

Modeling Framework ◽

Impact Of Climate Change ◽

The Impact

AbstractEco-evolutionary dynamics are essential in shaping the biological response of communities to ongoing climate change. Here we develop a spatially explicit eco-evolutionary framework which features more detailed species interactions, integrating evolution and dispersal. We include species interactions within and between trophic levels, and additionally, we incorporate the feature that species’ interspecific competition might change due to increasing temperatures and affect the impact of climate change on ecological communities. Our modeling framework captures previously reported ecological responses to climate change, and also reveals two key results. First, interactions between trophic levels as well as temperature-dependent competition within a trophic level mitigate the negative impact of climate change on biodiversity, emphasizing the importance of understanding biotic interactions in shaping climate change impact. Second, our trait-based perspective reveals a strong positive relationship between the within-community variation in preferred temperatures and the capacity to respond to climate change. Temperature-dependent competition consistently results both in higher trait variation and more responsive communities to altered climatic conditions. Our study demonstrates the importance of species interactions in an eco-evolutionary setting, further expanding our knowledge of the interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes.

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