Adaptation of reef-building corals to global warming depends upon standing heritable variation in tolerance traits upon which selection can act. Yet limited knowledge exists on heat-tolerance variation among conspecific individuals separated by metres to hundreds of kilometres. Here, we performed standardized acute heat-stress assays to quantify the thermal tolerance traits of 709 colonies of Acropora spathulata from 13 reefs spanning 1060 km (9.5° latitude) of the Great Barrier Reef. Thermal thresholds for photochemical efficiency and chlorophyll retention varied considerably among individual colonies both among reefs (approximately 6°C) and within reefs (approximately 3°C). Although tolerance rankings of colonies varied between traits, the most heat-tolerant corals (i.e. top 25% of each trait) were found at virtually all reefs, indicating widespread phenotypic variation. Reef-scale environmental predictors explained 12-62% of trait variation. Corals exposed to high thermal averages and recent thermal stress exhibited the greatest photochemical performance, probably reflecting local adaptation and stress pre-acclimatization, and the lowest chlorophyll retention suggesting stress pre-sensitization. Importantly, heat tolerance relative to local summer temperatures was the greatest on higher latitude reefs suggestive of higher adaptive potential. These results can be used to identify naturally tolerant coral populations and individuals for conservation and restoration applications.

Microbial carbon use efficiency (CUE) is an important variable mediating microbial effects on soil organic carbon (SOC) since it summarizes how much carbon is used for microbial growth or is respired. Yet, the role of CUE in regulating SOC storage remains debated, with evidence for both positive and negative SOC-CUE relations. Here, we use a combination of measured data around the world and numerical simulations to explore SOC-CUE relations accounting for temperature (T) effects on CUE. Results reveal that the sign of the CUE-T relation controls the direction of the SOC-CUE relations. A negative CUE-T relation leads to a positive SOC-CUE relation and vice versa, highlighting that CUE-T patterns significantly affect how organic carbon is used by microbes and hence SOC-CUE relations. Numerical results also confirm the observed negative SOC-T relation, regardless of the CUE-T patterns, implying that temperature plays a more dominant role than CUE in controlling SOC storage. The SOC-CUE relation is usually negative when temperature effects are isolated, even though it can become positive when nonlinear microbial turnover is considered. These results indicate a dominant role of CUE-T patterns in controlling the SOC-CUE relation. Our findings help to better understand SOC and microbial responses to a warming climate.

Ongoing warming will influence plant photosynthesis via thermal effects and by enhancing water deficit. As the primary limiting factor for the growth and development of plants in arid deserts, water may alter the potential warming effects on plant photosynthesis and lead to increased uncertainty in plant dynamics. Here, we used open-top chambers (OTCs) to evaluate the impacts of in situ warming (+0.5 and +1.5 °C) on the photosynthesis and growth of two representative desert plants, Artemisia ordosica and Grubovia dasyphylla, from wet to dry spells. The plant traits associated with photosynthetic diffusive and biochemical processes were also measured to explore the underlying mechanisms involved. We found that warming significantly increased the net photosynthetic rate (Anet) during wet spells under 1.5 °C warming in both plants, while only increased that of A. ordosica under 0.5 °C warming. During dry spells, Anet decreased both in A. ordosica and G. dasyphylla, with the rates of declining being 48 % and 41 %, respectively, higher than control under warming. Consequently, warming significantly amplified photosynthetic responses to drought events, which offset the positive warming effects during wet spells and led to unchanged plant biomass in both species. Besides, alterations in plant traits tended to be associated with positive warming effects during wet spells, and the negative effects of drought were mainly due to stomatal limitation. Our results emphasised that the potential benefits of warming during wet spells may be reversed during drought events. Thus, the adverse effects of ongoing warming on desert productivity may increase during dry spells in growing seasons and during dry years.

Climate warming affects the growth and development of pests, resulting in changes in their geographical distribution, which increases the difficulty in terms of prevention and control. The fruit fly, Neoceratitis asiatica (Becker), is a predominant frugivorous pest that causes serious yield loss in the goji berry, Lycium barbarum L. In recent years, with the expansion of cultivation area, the damage induced by the pest has become increasingly severe, significantly impeding the production of the goji berry. In this study, the potential suitable habitats of N. asiatica under current and future climate scenarios were simulated and predicted using the optimal MaxEnt model, based on the screening distribution records and environmental factors. The changes in the pest distribution under climate change were determined using ArcGIS. The results showed that the best combination of parameters for MaxEnt were feature combination (FC) = LQPT and regularization multiplier (RM) = 1. The dominant environmental factors influencing pest distribution were mean temperature of driest quarter, mean temperature of coldest quarter and precipitation of coldest quarter. Under different climate conditions, the suitable habitats of the pest primarily ranged between 27°-47° N and 73°-115° E. Under current climate conditions, the area of moderately and highly suitable habitats was 42.18 × 104 km2, and mainly distributed in Inner Mongolia (13.68 × 104 km2), Gansu (9.40 × 104 km2), Ningxia (5.07 × 104 km2), Qinghai (4.10 × 104 km2), and Xinjiang (3.97 × 104 km2) Provinces. Under future climate scenarios, the suitable area was projected to be lower than the current ones, except SSP245-2050s and SSP370-2070s, and the centroids of suitable habitats were mainly shifted to the northeast, except SSP370-2050s and SSP585-2070s. Our results provide valuable guidance for the monitoring and management of N. asiatica, as well as the selection of pest-free goji berry cultivation sites.

Rising global temperatures are often identified as the key driver impacting ecosystems and the services they provide by affecting biodiversity structure and function. A disproportionate amount of our understanding of biodiversity and function is from short-term experimental studies and static values of biodiversity indices, lacking the ability to monitor long-term trends and capture community dynamics. Here, we analyse a biennial dataset spanning 32 years of macroinvertebrate benthic communities and their functional response to increasing temperatures. We monitored changes in species\' thermal affinities to examine warming-related shifts by selecting their mid-point global temperature distribution range and linking them to species\' traits. We employed a novel weighted metric using Biological Trait Analysis (BTA) to gain better insights into the ecological potential of each species by incorporating species abundance and body size and selecting a subset of traits that represent five ecosystem functions: bioturbation activity, sediment stability, nutrient recycling and higher and lower trophic production. Using biodiversity indices (richness, Simpson\'s diversity and vulnerability) and functional indices (richness, Rao\'s Q and redundancy), the community structure showed no significant change over time with a narrow range of variation. However, we show shifts in species composition with warming and increases in the abundance of individuals, which altered ecosystem functioning positively and/or non-linearly. Yet, when higher taxonomic groupings than species were excluded from the analysis, there was only a weak increase in the measured change in community-weighted average thermal affinities, suggesting changes in ecosystem functions over time occur independently of temperature increase-related shifts in community composition. Other environmental factors driving species composition and abundance may be more important in these subtidal macrobenthic communities. This challenges the prevailing emphasis on temperature as the primary driver of ecological response to climate change and emphasises the necessity for a comprehensive understanding of the temporal dynamics of complex systems.

Recent climate warming and associated glacier retreat have dramatically changed the environmental conditions and microbial inhabitants of proglacial lakes. However, our understanding of the effects of climate warming and glacial influence on microbial biodiversity in these lakes remain relatively limited. Here, we studied bacterioplankton communities in 22 proglacial lakes on the Tibetan Plateau, spanning a range of nearly 7 °C in mean annual temperature (MAT), and examined the effects of climate and glaciers on their biodiversity by a space-to-time substitution. MAT emerged as the primary environmental driver of bacterioplankton biodiversity compared to glacial influence, increasing species richness and decreasing β-diversity. We identified 576 low-MAT (cold-preferred) species and 2,088 high-MAT (warm-preferred) species, and found that low-MAT species are less environmentally adapted, with their numbers declining as temperature increased. These results advance our understanding of temperature-driven bacterioplankton dynamics by disentangling the contrasting responses and adaptations of cold-preferred and warm-preferred species. Our findings highlight the vulnerability of cold-specialist taxa and the potential biodiversity losses associated with climate warming in the rapidly changing proglacial lakes.

Anthropogenic activities are driving significant changes in coastal ecological environments, increasingly spotlighting microorganisms associated with seagrass bed ecosystems. Labyrinthula is primarily recognized as a saprophytic protist associated with marine detritus, and it also acts as an opportunistic pathogen affecting marine algae, terrestrial plants and mollusks, especially in coastal environments. The genus plays a key role in the decomposition of marine detritus, facilitated by its interactions with diatoms and through the utilization of a diverse array of carbohydrate-active enzymes to decompose seagrass cell walls. However, human activities have significantly influenced the prevalence and severity of seagrass wasting disease (SWD) through factors such as climate warming, increased salinity and ocean acidification. The rise in temperature and salinity, exacerbated by human-induced climate change, has been shown to increase the susceptibility of seagrass to Labyrinthula, highlighting the adaptability of pathogen to environmental stressors. Moreover, the role of seagrass in regulating pathogen load and their immune response to Labyrinthula underscore the complex dynamics within these marine ecosystems. Importantly, the genotype diversity of seagrass hosts, environmental stress factors and the presence of marine organisms such as oysters, can influence the interaction mechanisms between seagrass and Labyrinthula. Besides, these organisms have the potential to both mitigate and facilitate pathogen transmission. The complexity of these interactions and their impacts driven by human activities calls for the development of comprehensive multi-factor models to better understand and manage the conservation and restoration of seagrass beds.

Global climate change has markedly influenced the structure and distribution of mid-high-latitude forests. In the forest region of Northeast China, the magnitude of climate warming surpasses the global average, which presents immense challenges to the survival and habitat sustainability of dominant tree species. We predicted the potential changes in aboveground biomass, dominant tree species composition, and distribution in the forest region of Northeast China over the next century under different climatic conditions encompassing the current scenario and future scenarios (RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5). Forest ecosystem process model LINKAGES 3.0 was used to simulate dynamic changes in species-level aboveground biomass under four climate scenarios at the homogeneous land-type unit level. The potential spatial distribution of tree species was investigated based on three indicators: extinction, colonization, and persistence. The results showed that LINKAGES 3.0 model effectively simulated the aboveground biomass of 17 dominant tree species in the forest region of Northeast China, achieving a high accuracy with R² = 0.88. Under the current, RCP2.6, and RCP4.5 climate scenarios, the dominant tree species presented gradual increases in aboveground biomass, whereas under RCP8.5, an initial increase and subsequent decline were observed. With increasing warming magnitude, cold-temperate coniferous tree species will gradually be replaced by other temperate broad-leaved tree species. Furthermore, a large temperature increase under RCP8.5 will likely produce a significant contraction in the potential distribution range of tree species like Larch, Scotch pine, Ribbed birch, Spruce and Fir, while most temperate broad-leaved tree species and Korean pine are expected to demonstrate a northward migration. These findings provide guidance for enhancing the adaptability and resilience of forest ecosystems in middle and high latitudes and addressing the threats posed by climate warming.

Predator responses to warming can occur via phenotypic plasticity, evolutionary adaptation or a combination of both, changing their top-down effects on prey communities. However, we lack evidence of how warming-induced evolutionary changes in predators may influence natural food webs. Here, we ask whether wild fish subject to warming across multiple generations differ in their impacts on prey communities compared with their nearby conspecifics experiencing a natural thermal regime. We carried out a common garden mesocosm experiment with larval perch (Perca fluviatilis), originating from a heated or reference coastal environment, feeding on zooplankton communities under a gradient of experimental temperatures. Overall, in the presence of fish of heated origin, zooplankton abundance was higher and did not change with experimental warming, whereas in the presence of fish of unheated origin, it declined with experimental temperature. Responses in zooplankton taxonomic and size composition suggest that larvae of heated origin consume more large-sized taxa as the temperature increases. Our findings show that differences between fish populations, potentially representing adaptation to their long-term thermal environments, can affect the abundance, biomass, size and species composition of their prey communities. This suggests that rapid microevolution in predators to ongoing climate warming might have indirect cross-generational ecological consequences propagating through food webs.

The magnitude of terrestrial carbon (C)-climate feedback largely depends on the temperature sensitivity of soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition (Q10). However, our understanding of determinants of Q10 for SOM fractions such as particulate and mineral-associated organic matter (POM and MAOM, respectively) is still inadequate. Particularly, it remains unclear whether microbial effects on Q10 are fraction-dependent, which induces large uncertainties in projecting soil C dynamics. Here, we conducted large-scale topsoil sampling on the Tibetan Plateau, in combination with SOM fractionation and 300-day laboratory incubation to assess SOM fraction-dependent linkages between Q10 and microbial properties. We found that compared with MAOM, POM had larger Q10 and greater microbial diversity, and also structured distinct microbial communities as well as their co-occurrence patterns. Furthermore, associations of Q10 with microbial properties differed between the two SOM fractions. Bacterial community composition and relative abundance of bacterial keystone taxa affected Q10 for POM and MAOM respectively, while bacterial alpha diversity showed opposite relationships with Q10 for POM and MAOM. These findings highlight the necessity of incorporating SOM fraction-dependent microbial properties and their linkages with Q10 into Earth system models to accurately predict terrestrial C-climate feedback.