In:
Ecosphere, Wiley, Vol. 7, No. 3 ( 2016-03)
Kurzfassung:
Theory suggests that bottom‐up effects of resource diversity to upper trophic levels increases ecosystem functioning. In particular, energy flux from the detritus to other organisms in an ecosystem affects food web dynamics. To our knowledge, no empirical studies have examined how detritivore diversity alters the energy flux to upper trophic levels in a food web. Here we test the hypothesis that the greater diversity of litter‐consuming detritivores promotes energy flow between the resource and top predators in agricultural ponds using stable isotope analysis. We found that the diversity and abundance of detritivores had a significant positive effect on the relative contribution rate of detritus to the diet of predators, even after confounding effects were controlled for. In addition, the number of functional feeding groups of detritivores was significantly correlated with the contribution of detritus to the diet of predators, and particularly, high functional diversity of detritivores increased the energy flow from the detritus to the detritivores compared to the flow from the detritivores to the predators. It is likely that high functional diversity within species induces complementarity effects on decomposition and this may be a potential mechanism leading to diversity effects on the energy flow in detritus‐based food web. Our study is the first to demonstrate bottom‐up effects of detritivore diversity on energy flow in food webs.
Materialart:
Online-Ressource
ISSN:
2150-8925
,
2150-8925
Sprache:
Englisch
Verlag:
Wiley
Publikationsdatum:
2016
ZDB Id:
2572257-8
