Summer drought alters plant-mediated competition between foliar- and root-feeding insects

With confirmation of anthropogenically induced climate change, the spotlight is on biologists to predict and detect effects on populations. The complexity of interactions within and between the biotic and abiotic components involved makes this a tough challenge, and most studies have consequently considered effects of only single climate variables on single species. However, some have gone further, and recently published long-term datasets now offer opportunities that complement new experimental approaches that span trophic levels. With these datasets, predicting relative shifts in temporal and spatial associations could be among the most tractable problems.