Effect of current global warming trends on temperature-sensitive tri-trophic interactions

Abstract

Understanding the impact of current warming trends on trophic interactions in diverse ecosystems presents a formidable challenge. While theoretical studies have explored multi-trophic interactions across broad temperature gradients, applying these models to realistic ecological scenarios where ecosystems experience modest gradual change in mean temperature remains underexplored. We address this research gap by examining a dynamic tri-trophic (resource-consumer-predator) system, where all ecological rates are modelled as explicit functions of temperature. We focus on the system’s bistable behaviour, characterized by chaotic attractor sustaining oscillations of all trophic levels and periodic attractor in resource–consumer plane. Under warming conditions, the chaotic attractor transitions through a sequence of states, including chaos, transient chaos, chaos, and ultimately, loss of bistability, as temperature rises. These transitions occur within narrow temperature range aligned with recent warming trends and this pattern remains consistent over a wide range of species’ thermal sensitivity, suggesting a generic feature of tri-trophic system’s response to warming. However, the temperature thresholds associated with these transitions differ between temperate and tropical biomes, indicating spatial heterogeneity in ecosystem responses to warming. Our findings support the hypothesis that tropical regions are more vulnerable to warming, despite experiencing low increase in temperature. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of partial control method applied during transient chaos phase as a potential strategy for preventing predator population collapse. Overall, our findings offer novel insights into complex, nonlinear impacts of warming on ecological systems and provide theoretical basis for partial control method as a management tool to prevent extinction.