University researchers in the UK presented information that provides an explanation on how global warming has adversely affected the efficiency of food chains.
On the premise that warmer weather conditions caused by global warming, is causing a rise in metabolic costs of growth, researchers from the Queen Mary University of London and the University of Exeter have concluded that global warming is currently reducing the energy flowing in the food chain. The occurrence has in turn, been causing depletion in the wildlife’s biomass.
Global Warming Reduces Energy Transferred to Every Food Chain Level
The study revealed that 4°C of warming lessened by 56% the energy being transferred in. That is considering that planktons are the organisms at the bottom of the aquatic food chain.
Food webs providing freshwater sustenance to marine ecosystems, on which humans are dependent as sources of food, have zooplanktons and phytoplanktons as foundations. According to the report, the study is the first to directly prove the fact that the increase in the cost of growth is caused by warmer temperatures and that it lessens the energy transferred in the food web.
Queen Mary University of London Professor Mark Trimmer stated that the consequences could be very significant, if the same findings are occurring in natural ecosystems. Dr. Diego Barneche of the AIMS and the UWA Oceans Institute explained that normally, 10% of the energy constructed on one part of the food chain makes it to the next food chain levelt. Yet if if warmer temperature is reducing the energy transferred to the predators in the food web, it also denotes that the metabolic rates among wild animals will accelerate faster than their growth rate.
