Impacts of atmospheric and precipitation change on aboveground-belowground invertebrate interactions

This chapter summarises key aboveground-belowground interactions between invertebrates and focuses on aboveground-belowground herbivore interactions. It considers how these may be changed by elevated carbon dioxide (e[CO2]), operating alone and in tandem with increased air temperatures, and altered precipitation patterns. It is clear that climate and atmospheric change have the capacity to modify aboveground-belowground invertebrate interactions, with altered patterns of precipitation seemingly being the most influential. Increases in temperature are likely to affect aboveground invertebrates much more than belowground invertebrates, since the latter are buffered from temperature changes to a greater extent. The impacts of e[CO2] on aboveground arthropods are relatively well characterised, but comparatively less is known about the responses of belowground invertebrates. The chapter describes a series of experiments that explored the impacts of predicted rainfall patterns on the interactions between belowground herbivores, aboveground herbivores and natural enemies of the aboveground herbivores.