Model parameters showed mostly unimodal responses to temperature, with one parameter (predator mortality) increasing monotonically with temperature and one parameter (predator conversion efficiency) invariant with temperature.
We found that predator–prey cycles shrank in state space from colder to hotter temperatures and that both cycle period and amplitude varied with temperature.
We then used ordinary differential equation fitting to estimate parameters of a model describing the dynamics, and used these estimates to assess the long-term temperature dependance of all the underlying mechanisms. We measured the population dynamics of the Didinium-Paramecium predator–prey system across a wide range of temperatures to reveal systematic changes in the dynamics of the system. Our goal was to empirically document shifts in predator–prey cycles over the full range of temperatures that can possibly support a predator–prey system and then to uncover the effect of temperature on the underlying mechanisms driving those changes. However, ecological dynamics unfold over many generations. The temperature dependance of these processes-which are the underlying mechanisms of ecological dynamics-is often thought to be exponential or unimodal, generally supported by short-term experiments. Predicting the effects of climate warming on the dynamics of ecological systems requires understanding how temperature influences birth rates, death rates and the strength of species interactions. Temperature alters the shape of predator–prey cycles through effects on underlying mechanisms. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited. School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA DOI 10.7717/peerj.9377 Published Accepted Received Academic Editor Yann Clough Subject Areas Ecology, Climate Change Biology Keywords Predator prey dynamics, Predator prey cycles, Climate change, Didinium, Paramecium, Thermal performance curve, Arrhenius, Differential equation fitting Copyright © 2020 DeLong and Lyon Licence This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed.
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