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?-diversity decreases with increasing trophic rank in plant - arthropod food chains on lake islands.

ABSTRACT: Contrasting trophic theories of island biogeography try to link spatial patterns in species distribution and richness with dietary preferences, arguing that the spatial turnover of species among habitat patches changes with trophic rank causing a systematic change in the proportion of plants, herbivores, and predators across habitats of different size. Here we test these predictions using quantitative surveys of plants, spiders, and herbivores as well as of omnivorous and predatory ground beetles on undisturbed Polish lake islands. We found decreased proportions of predators and habitat generalists on larger islands. Environmental niches and niche overlap were highest in predators. Variability in environmental niche width among species increased at higher trophic levels. Our results confirm models that predict a decrease in spatial species turnover (?-diversity) with increasing trophic level. We speculate that the major trigger for these differences is a reduced dispersal ability in plants at basal trophic ranks when compared to higher trophic levels.

SUBMITTER: Zalewski M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6258687 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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β-diversity decreases with increasing trophic rank in plant - arthropod food chains on lake islands.

Zalewski Marcin M Hajdamowicz Izabela I Stańska Marzena M Dudek-Godeau Dorota D Tykarski Piotr P Sienkiewicz Paweł P Ciurzycki Wojciech W Ulrich Werner W

Scientific reports 20181127 1

Contrasting trophic theories of island biogeography try to link spatial patterns in species distribution and richness with dietary preferences, arguing that the spatial turnover of species among habitat patches changes with trophic rank causing a systematic change in the proportion of plants, herbivores, and predators across habitats of different size. Here we test these predictions using quantitative surveys of plants, spiders, and herbivores as well as of omnivorous and predatory ground beetle ...[more]

PMID: 30479354

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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.

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Dataset Information

?-diversity decreases with increasing trophic rank in plant - arthropod food chains on lake islands.

Publications

β-diversity decreases with increasing trophic rank in plant - arthropod food chains on lake islands.

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