Climatic and local stressor interactions threaten tropical forests and coral reefs.

Tropical forests and coral reefs host a disproportionately large share of global biodiversity and provide ecosystem functions and services used by millions of people. Yet, ongoing climate change is leading to an increase in frequency and magnitude of extreme climatic events in the tropics, which, in combination with other local human disturbances, is leading to unprecedented negative ecological consequences for tropical forests and coral reefs. Here, we provide an overview of how and where climate extremes are affecting the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth and summarize how interactions between global, regional and local stressors are affecting tropical forest and coral reef systems through impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem resilience. We also discuss some key challenges and opportunities to promote mitigation and adaptation to a changing climate at local and global scales. This article is part of the theme issue 'Climate change and ecosystems: threats, opportunities and solutions'.

Distance to range edge determines sensitivity to deforestation.

It is generally assumed that deforestation affects a species consistently across space, however populations near their geographic range edge may exist at their niche limits and therefore be more sensitive to disturbance. We found that both within and across Atlantic Forest bird species, populations are more sensitive to deforestation when near their range edge. In fact, the negative effects of deforestation on bird occurrences switched to positive in the range core (>829 km), in line with Ellenberg's rule. We show that the proportion of populations at their range core and edge varies across Brazil, suggesting deforestation effects on communities, and hence the most appropriate conservation action, also vary geographically.

Predicting the effect of habitat modification on networks of interacting species.

A pressing challenge for ecologists is predicting how human-driven environmental changes will affect the complex pattern of interactions among species in a community. Weighted networks are an important tool for studying changes in interspecific interactions because they record interaction frequencies in addition to presence or absence at a field site. Here we show that changes in weighted network structure following habitat modification are, in principle, predictable. Our approach combines field data with mathematical models: the models separate changes in relative species abundance from changes in interaction preferences (which describe how interaction frequencies deviate from random encounters). The models with the best predictive ability compared to data requirement are those that capture systematic changes in interaction preferences between different habitat types. Our results suggest a viable approach for predicting the consequences of rapid environmental change for the structure of complex ecological networks, even in the absence of detailed, system-specific empirical data.In a changing world, the ability to predict the impact of environmental change on ecological communities is essential. Here, the authors show that by separating species abundances from interaction preferences, they can predict the effects of habitat modification on the structure of weighted species interaction networks, even with limited data.

Genotype matching in a parasitoid-host genotypic food web: an approach for measuring effects of environmental change.

Food webs typically quantify interactions between species, whereas evolution operates through the success of alleles within populations of a single species. To bridge this gap, we quantify genotypic interaction networks among individuals of a single specialized parasitoid species and its obligate to cyclically parthenogenetic aphid host along a climatic gradient. As a case study for the kinds of questions genotype food webs could be used to answer, we show that genetically similar parasitoids became more likely to attack genetically similar hosts in warmer sites (i.e. there was network-wide congruence between the within-species shared allelic distance of the parasitoid and that of its host). Narrowing of host-genotype-niche breadth by parasitoids could reduce resilience of the network to changes in host genetic structure or invasion by novel host genotypes and inhibit biological control. Thus, our approach can be easily used to detect changes to sub-species-level food webs, which may have important ecological and evolutionary implications, such as promoting host-race specialization or the accelerated loss of functional diversity following extinctions of closely related genotypes.

Specialization and rarity predict nonrandom loss of interactions from mutualist networks.

The loss of interactions from mutualistic networks could foreshadow both plant and animal species extinctions. Yet, the characteristics of interactions that predispose them to disruption are largely unknown. We analyzed 12 pollination webs from isolated hills ("sierras"), in Argentina, ranging from tens to thousands of hectares. We found evidence of nonrandom loss of interactions with decreasing sierra size. Low interaction frequency and high specialization between interacting partners contributed additively to increase the vulnerability of interactions to disruption. Interactions between generalists in the largest sierras were ubiquitous across sierras, but many of them lost their central structural role in the smallest sierras. Thus, particular configurations of interaction networks, along with unique ecological relations and evolutionary pathways, could be lost forever after habitat reduction.

Deforestation homogenizes tropical parasitoid-host networks.

Human activities drive biotic homogenization (loss of regional diversity) of many taxa. However, whether species interaction networks (e.g., food webs) can also become homogenized remains largely unexplored. Using 48 quantitative parasitoid-host networks replicated through space and time across five tropical habitats, we show that deforestation greatly homogenized network structure at a regional level, such that interaction composition became more similar across rice and pasture sites compared with forested habitats. This was not simply caused by altered consumer and resource community composition, but was associated with altered consumer foraging success, such that parasitoids were more likely to locate their hosts in deforested habitats. Furthermore, deforestation indirectly homogenized networks in time through altered mean consumer and prey body size, which decreased in deforested habitats. Similar patterns were obtained with binary networks, suggesting that interaction (link) presence-absence data may be sufficient to detect network homogenization effects. Our results show that tropical agroforestry systems can support regionally diverse parasitoid-host networks, but that removal of canopy cover greatly homogenizes the structure of these networks in space, and to a lesser degree in time. Spatiotemporal homogenization of interaction networks may alter coevolutionary outcomes and reduce ecological resilience at regional scales, but may not necessarily be predictable from community changes observed within individual trophic levels.

Caveats to quantifying ecosystem services: fruit abortion blurs benefits from crop pollination.

The recent trend to place monetary values on ecosystem services has led to studies on the economic importance of pollinators for agricultural crops. Several recent studies indicate regional, long-term pollinator declines, and economic consequences have been derived from declining pollination efficiencies. However, use of pollinator services as economic incentives for conservation must consider environmental factors such as drought, pests, and diseases, which can also limit yields. Moreover, "flower excess" is a well-known reproductive strategy of plants as insurance against unpredictable, external factors that limit reproduction. With three case studies on the importance of pollination levels for amounts of harvested fruits of three tropical crops (passion fruit in Brazil, coffee in Ecuador, and cacao in Indonesia) we illustrate how reproductive strategies and environmental stress can obscure initial benefits from improved pollination. By interpreting these results with findings from evolutionary sciences, agronomy, and studies on wild-plant populations, we argue that studies on economic benefits from pollinators should include the total of ecosystem processes that (1) lead to successful pollination and (2) mobilize nutrients and improve plant quality to the extent that crop yields indeed benefit from enhanced pollinator services. Conservation incentives that use quantifications of nature's services to human welfare will benefit from approaches at the ecosystem level that take into account the broad spectrum of biological processes that limit or deliver the service.

Diversity, ecosystem function, and stability of parasitoid-host interactions across a tropical habitat gradient.

Global biodiversity decline has prompted great interest in the effects of habitat modification and diversity on the functioning and stability of ecosystem processes. However, the applicability of previous modeled or mesocosm community studies to real diverse communities in different habitats remains ambiguous. We exposed standardized nesting resources for naturally occurring communities of cavity-nesting bees and wasps and their parasitoids in coastal Ecuador, to test the effects of host and parasitoid diversity on an ecosystem function (parasitism rates) and temporal variability in this function. In accordance with predictions of complementary host use, parasitism rates increased with increasing diversity, not simply abundance, of parasitoids. In contrast, parasitism decreased with increasing host diversity, possibly due to positive prey interactions or increased probability of selecting unpalatable species. Temporal variability in parasitism was lower in plots with high mean parasitoid diversity and higher in plots with temporally variable host and parasitoid diversity. These effects of diversity on parasitism and temporal stability in parasitism rates were sufficiently strong to be visible across five different habitat types, representing a gradient of increasing anthropogenic modification. Habitat type did not directly affect parasitism rates, but host and parasitoid diversity and abundance were higher in highly modified habitats, and parasitoid diversity was positively correlated with rates of parasitism. The slope of the richness-parasitism relationship did not vary significantly across habitats, although that for Simpson's diversity was significant only in rice and pasture. We also show that pooling data over long time periods, as in previous studies, can blur the effect of diversity on parasitism rates, and the appropriate spatiotemporal scale of study must be considered.