Project description:Seabirds deposit large amounts of nutrient rich guano on their nesting islands. The increased nutrient availability strongly affects plants and consumers. Consumer response differs among taxonomic groups, but mechanisms causing these differences are poorly understood. Ecological stoichiometry might provide tools to understand these mechanisms. ES suggests that nutrient rich taxa are more likely to be nutrient limited than nutrient poorer taxa and are more favored under nutrient enrichment. Here, we quantified differences in the elemental composition of soil, plants, and consumers between islands with and without nesting cormorant colonies and tested predictions made based on ES by relating the elemental composition and the eventual mismatch between consumer and resource stoichiometry to observed density differences among the island categories. We found that nesting cormorants radically changed the soil nutrient content and thereby indirectly plant nutrient content and resource quality to herbivores. In contrast, consumers showed only small differences in their elemental composition among the island categories. While we cannot evaluate the cause of the apparent homeostasis of invertebrates without additional data, we can conclude that from the perspective of the next trophic level, there is no difference in diet quality (in terms of N and P content) between island categories. Thus, bottom-up effects seemed mainly be mediated via changes in resource quantity not quality. Despite a large potential trophic mismatch we were unable to observe any relation between the invertebrate stoichiometry and their density response to nesting cormorant colonies. We conclude that in our system stoichiometry is not a useful predictor of arthropod responses to variation in resource nutrient content. Furthermore, we found no strong evidence that resource quality was a prime determinant of invertebrate densities. Other factors like resource quantity, habitat structure and species interactions might be more important or masked stoichiometric effects.

Project description:Grazing exclusion may lead to biodiversity loss and homogenization of naturally heterogeneous and species-rich grassland ecosystems, and these effects may cascade to higher trophic levels and ecosystem properties. Although grazing exclusion has been studied elsewhere, the consequences of alleviating the disturbance regime in grassland ecosystems remain unclear. In this paper, we present results of the first five years of an experiment in native grasslands of southern Brazil. Using a randomized block experimental design, we examined the effects of three grazing treatments on plant and arthropod communities: (i) deferred grazing (i.e., intermittent grazing), (ii) grazing exclusion and (iii) a control under traditional continuous grazing, which were applied to 70 x 70 m experimental plots, in six regionally distributed blocks. We evaluated plant community responses regarding taxonomic and functional diversity (life-forms) in separate spatial components: alpha (1 x 1 m subplots), beta, and gamma (70 x 70 m plots), as well as the cascading effects on arthropod high-taxa. By estimating effect sizes (treatments vs. control) by bootstrap resampling, both deferred grazing and grazing exclusion mostly increased vegetation height, plant biomass and standing dead biomass. The effect of grazing exclusion on plant taxonomic diversity was negative. Conversely, deferred grazing increased plant taxonomic diversity, but both treatments reduced plant functional diversity. Reduced grazing pressure in both treatments promoted the break of dominance by prostrate species, followed by fast homogenization of vegetation structure towards dominance of ligneous and erect species. These changes in the plant community led to increases in high-taxa richness and abundance of vegetation-dwelling arthropod groups under both treatments, but had no detectable effects on epigeic arthropods. Our results indicate that decision-making regarding the conservation of southern Brazil grasslands should include both intensive and alleviated levels of grazing management, but not complete grazing exclusion, to maximize conservation results when considering plant and arthropod communities.

Project description:It has long been recognized that species occupy a specific ecological niche within their ecosystem. The ecological niche is defined as the number of conditions and resources that limit species distribution. Within their ecological niche, species do not exist in a single physiological state but in a number of states we call the Natural Operating Range. In this paper we link ecological niche theory to physiological ecology by measuring gene expression levels of collembolans exposed to various natural conditions. The soil-dwelling collembolan Folsomia candida was exposed to 26 natural soils with different soil characteristics (soil type, land use, practice, etc). The animals were exposed for two days and gene expression levels were measured. The main factor found to regulate gene expression was the soil type (sand or clay), in which 18.5% of the measured genes were differentially expressed. Gene Ontology analysis showed animals exposed to sandy soils experience general stress, affecting cell homeostasis and replication. Multivariate analysis linking soil chemical data to gene expression data revealed that soil fertility influences gene expression. Land-use and practice had less influence on gene expression; only forest soils showed a different expression pattern. A variation in gene expression variation analysis showed overall low variance in gene expression. The large difference in response to soil type was caused by the soil physicochemical properties where F. candida experiences clay soils and sandy soils as very different from each other. This collembolan prefers fertile soils with high organic matter content, as soil fertility was found to correlate with gene expression and animals exposed to sandy soils (which, in general, have lower organic matter content) experience more general stress. Finally, we conclude that there is no such thing as a fixed physiological state for animals in their ecological niche and the boundary between the ecological niche and a stressed state depends on the genes/pathways investigated.

Project description:It has long been recognized that species occupy a specific ecological niche within their ecosystem. The ecological niche is defined as the number of conditions and resources that limit species distribution. Within their ecological niche, species do not exist in a single physiological state but in a number of states we call the Natural Operating Range. In this paper we link ecological niche theory to physiological ecology by measuring gene expression levels of collembolans exposed to various natural conditions. The soil-dwelling collembolan Folsomia candida was exposed to 26 natural soils with different soil characteristics (soil type, land use, practice, etc). The animals were exposed for two days and gene expression levels were measured. The main factor found to regulate gene expression was the soil type (sand or clay), in which 18.5% of the measured genes were differentially expressed. Gene Ontology analysis showed animals exposed to sandy soils experience general stress, affecting cell homeostasis and replication. Multivariate analysis linking soil chemical data to gene expression data revealed that soil fertility influences gene expression. Land-use and practice had less influence on gene expression; only forest soils showed a different expression pattern. A variation in gene expression variation analysis showed overall low variance in gene expression. The large difference in response to soil type was caused by the soil physicochemical properties where F. candida experiences clay soils and sandy soils as very different from each other. This collembolan prefers fertile soils with high organic matter content, as soil fertility was found to correlate with gene expression and animals exposed to sandy soils (which, in general, have lower organic matter content) experience more general stress. Finally, we conclude that there is no such thing as a fixed physiological state for animals in their ecological niche and the boundary between the ecological niche and a stressed state depends on the genes/pathways investigated. Test animals were exposed to 26 natural soils + 2 control soils. 4 biological replicates per soil containing 25 grams of soil and 30 23-day-old animals per replicate, RNA was isolated after two days of exposure. for the micro-array hybridization design we made use of an interwoven loop design. from the four replicates per soil two were labeled with Cy3 and 2 with Cy5. It was made sure that now two replicates of the same soil were ever hybridized against the same soil.

Project description:Patterns of precipitation and nitrogen (N) deposition are changing in ecosystems worldwide. Simultaneous increases in precipitation and N deposition can relieve co-limiting soil resource conditions for plants and result in synergistic plant responses, which may affect animals and plant responses to higher trophic levels. However, the potential for synergistic effects of precipitation and N deposition on animals and plant responses to herbivores and predators (via trophic cascades) is unclear. We investigated the influence of precipitation and N enrichment on ecological dynamics across three trophic levels, hypothesizing that herbivores and plants would exhibit synergistic responses to the combined influence of precipitation, N amendments and predators. To test this, we conducted a field experiment with arthropods on two model plant species, Nicotiana tabacum and Nicotiana rustica. First, we characterized the plant-arthropod assemblages, finding that N. tabacum hosted greater abundances of caterpillars, while N. rustica hosted more sap-sucking herbivores. Next, we evaluated the effects of rainwater, soil N, and predatory spider manipulations for both plant-arthropod assemblages. On N. tabacum, water and N availability had an interactive effect on caterpillars, where caterpillars were most abundant with rainwater additions and least abundant when both rainwater and N were added. For N. rustica, foliar chemistry had a synergistic response to all three experimental factors. Compared to spider-absent conditions, leaf N concentration increased and C/N decreased when spiders were present, but this response only occurred under high water and N availability. Spiders indirectly altered plant chemistry via a facilitative effect of spiders on sap-sucking herbivores, potentially due to intra-guild predation, and a positive effect of sap-suckers on foliar N concentration. Our study suggests that predictions of the ecological impacts of altered precipitation and N deposition may need to account for the effects of resource co-limitation on dynamics across trophic levels.

Project description:Ecological restoration is expected to reverse the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Due to the low number of well-replicated field studies, the extent to which restoration recovers plant communities, and the factors underlying possible shortcomings, are not well understood even in medium term. We compared the plant community composition of 38 sites comprising pristine, forestry-drained, and 5 or 10 years ago restored peatlands in southern Finland, with special interest in understanding spatial variation within studied sites, as well as the development of the numbers and the abundances of target species. Our results indicated a recovery of community composition 5-10 years after restoration, but there was significant heterogeneity in recovery. Plant communities farthest away from ditches were very similar to their pristine reference already 10 years after restoration. In contrast, communities in the ditches were as far from the target as the drained communities. The recovery appears to be characterized by a decline in the number and abundance of species typical to degraded conditions, and increase in the abundance of characteristic peatland species. However, we found no increase above the drained state in the number of characteristic peatland species. Our results suggest that there is a risk of drawing premature conclusions on the efficiency of ecological restoration with the current practice of short-term monitoring. Our results also illustrate fine-scale within-site spatial variability in the degradation and recovery of the plant communities that should be considered when evaluating the success of restoration. Overall, we find the heterogeneous outcome of restoration observed here promising. However, low recovery in the number of characteristic species demonstrates the importance of prioritizing restoration sites, and addressing the uncertainty of recovery when setting restoration targets. It appears that it is easier to eradicate unwanted species than regain characteristic species by restoration.

Project description:Carrion of large animals is an extremely nutrient rich, ephemeral resource that is essential for many species, but is scarce in the anthropogenic Western-European landscape due to legislative restrictions. Rewilding, a novel conservation strategy that aims at restoring natural processes with minimal human intervention, is increasing in popularity and could lead to increased carrion availability in the landscape. It is therefore important to understand the effects of carrion on biodiversity. We investigated the direct and delayed (five months) effects of red deer (Cervus elaphus) carcasses on plants and arthropods in the Oostvaardersplassen, the Netherlands, one of the oldest rewilding sites in Europe. Specifically, we tested whether carrion has a positive direct effect on the abundances and diversity of various arthropod functional groups, as well as a delayed effect on the vegetation and arthropods through the increased nutrient availability. During the active decomposition stage in spring, we, not surprisingly, observed higher abundances of carrion associated species (scavengers and their specialized predators) at the carrion sites than at control sites without carrion, but no higher abundances of predators or detritivores. In late summer, after near-complete decomposition, plant biomass was five times higher, and nutritional plant quality (C:N ratio) was higher at the carrion sites than at the control sites. Arthropod abundance and diversity were also manifold higher, owing to higher numbers of herbivorous and predatory species. Regression analysis showed that abundances of herbivores and detritivores were positively related to plant biomass, and predator abundances were positively related to abundances of herbivores and detritivores, suggesting bottom-up effects propagating through the food chain. Our results show that even in a naturally nutrient-rich ecosystem like the Oostvaardersplassen, carrion can have strong positive effects on local plant biomass and nutritional quality and arthropod abundances, lasting the whole growing season. We found evidence that these effects were first directly caused by the presence of carrion, and later by the enhanced nutrient availability in the soil. This highlights the importance of the indirect pathways by which carrion can structure arthropod communities.

Dataset Information

Evolution in plant populations as a driver of ecological changes in arthropod communities.

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Evolution in plant populations as a driver of ecological changes in arthropod communities.

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