TY - JOUR
T1 - Survival of rapidly fluctuating natural low winter temperatures by High Arctic soil invertebrates
AU - Convey, Peter
AU - Abbandonato, Holly
AU - Bergan, Frode
AU - Beumer, Larissa Teresa
AU - Biersma, Elisabeth Machteld
AU - Bråthen, Vegard Sandøy
AU - D'Imperio, Ludovica
AU - Jensen, Christina Kjellerup
AU - Nilsen, Solveig
AU - Paquin, Karolina
AU - Stenkewitz, Ute
AU - Svoen, Mildrid Elvik
AU - Winkler, Judith
AU - Müller, Eike
AU - Coulson, Stephen James
N1 - CENPERM[2015]
PY - 2015/12/1
Y1 - 2015/12/1
N2 - The extreme polar environment creates challenges for its resident invertebrate communities and the stress tolerance of some of these animals has been examined over many years. However, although it is well appreciated that standard air temperature records often fail to describe accurately conditions experienced at microhabitat level, few studies have explicitly set out to link field conditions experienced by natural multispecies communities with the more detailed laboratory ecophysiological studies of a small number of 'representative' species. This is particularly the case during winter, when snow cover may insulate terrestrial habitats from extreme air temperature fluctuations. Further, climate projections suggest large changes in precipitation will occur in the polar regions, with the greatest changes expected during the winter period and, hence, implications for the insulation of overwintering microhabitats. To assess survival of natural High Arctic soil invertebrate communities contained in soil and vegetation cores to natural winter temperature variations, the overwintering temperatures they experienced were manipulated by deploying cores in locations with varying snow accumulation: No Snow, Shallow Snow (30. cm) and Deep Snow (120. cm). Air temperatures during the winter period fluctuated frequently between +3 and -24. °C, and the No Snow soil temperatures reflected this variation closely, with the extreme minimum being slightly lower. Under 30. cm of snow, soil temperatures varied less and did not decrease below -12. °C. Those under deep snow were even more stable and did not decline below -2. °C. Despite these striking differences in winter thermal regimes, there were no clear differences in survival of the invertebrate fauna between treatments, including oribatid, prostigmatid and mesostigmatid mites, Araneae, Collembola, Nematocera larvae or Coleoptera. This indicates widespread tolerance, previously undocumented for the Araneae, Nematocera or Coleoptera, of both direct exposure to at least -24. °C and the rapid and large temperature fluctuations. These results suggest that the studied polar soil invertebrate community may be robust to at least one important predicted consequence of projected climate change.
AB - The extreme polar environment creates challenges for its resident invertebrate communities and the stress tolerance of some of these animals has been examined over many years. However, although it is well appreciated that standard air temperature records often fail to describe accurately conditions experienced at microhabitat level, few studies have explicitly set out to link field conditions experienced by natural multispecies communities with the more detailed laboratory ecophysiological studies of a small number of 'representative' species. This is particularly the case during winter, when snow cover may insulate terrestrial habitats from extreme air temperature fluctuations. Further, climate projections suggest large changes in precipitation will occur in the polar regions, with the greatest changes expected during the winter period and, hence, implications for the insulation of overwintering microhabitats. To assess survival of natural High Arctic soil invertebrate communities contained in soil and vegetation cores to natural winter temperature variations, the overwintering temperatures they experienced were manipulated by deploying cores in locations with varying snow accumulation: No Snow, Shallow Snow (30. cm) and Deep Snow (120. cm). Air temperatures during the winter period fluctuated frequently between +3 and -24. °C, and the No Snow soil temperatures reflected this variation closely, with the extreme minimum being slightly lower. Under 30. cm of snow, soil temperatures varied less and did not decrease below -12. °C. Those under deep snow were even more stable and did not decline below -2. °C. Despite these striking differences in winter thermal regimes, there were no clear differences in survival of the invertebrate fauna between treatments, including oribatid, prostigmatid and mesostigmatid mites, Araneae, Collembola, Nematocera larvae or Coleoptera. This indicates widespread tolerance, previously undocumented for the Araneae, Nematocera or Coleoptera, of both direct exposure to at least -24. °C and the rapid and large temperature fluctuations. These results suggest that the studied polar soil invertebrate community may be robust to at least one important predicted consequence of projected climate change.
KW - Climate change
KW - Freeze-thaw
KW - Microarthropod
KW - Polar
KW - Snow
U2 - 10.1016/j.jtherbio.2014.07.009
DO - 10.1016/j.jtherbio.2014.07.009
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0306-4565
VL - 54
SP - 111
EP - 117
JO - Journal of Thermal Biology
JF - Journal of Thermal Biology
ER -