Foundational biodiversity effects propagate through coastal food webs via multiple pathways.

Autor: Ramus AP; Department of Biology and Marine Biology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, North Carolina, USA., Lefcheck JS; Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network, MarineGEO, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Edgewater, Maryland, USA., Long ZT; Department of Biology and Marine Biology, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Wilmington, North Carolina, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Ecology [Ecology] 2022 Nov; Vol. 103 (11), pp. e3796. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Jul 27.
DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3796
Abstrakt: Relatively few studies have attempted to resolve the pathways through which the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning cascade from one trophic level to another. Here, we manipulated the richness of habitat-forming seaweeds in a western Atlantic estuary to explore how changes in foundation species diversity affect the structure and functioning of the benthic consumer communities that they support. Structural equation modeling revealed that macroalgal richness enhanced invertebrate abundance, biomass, and diversity, both directly by changing the quality and palatability of the foundational substrate and indirectly by increasing the total biomass of available habitat. Consumer responses were largely driven by a single foundational seaweed, although stronger complementarity among macroalgae was observed for invertebrate richness. These findings with diverse foundational phyla extend earlier inferences from terrestrial grasslands by showing that biodiversity effects can simultaneously propagate through multiple independent pathways to maintain animal foodwebs. Our work also highlights the potential ramifications of human-induced changes in marine ecosystems.
(© 2022 The Authors. Ecology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Ecological Society of America.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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