| Habitat structure alters top-down control in litter communities. | |
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MedLine Citation:
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PMID: 23188055 Owner: NLM Status: Publisher |
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
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The question whether top-down or bottom-up forces dominate trophic relationships, energy flow, and abundances within food webs has fuelled much ecological research with particular focus on soil litter ecosystems. Because litter simultaneously provides habitat structure and a basal resource, disentangling direct trophic and indirect non-trophic effects on different trophic levels remains challenging. Here, we focussed on short-term per capita interaction strengths of generalist predators (centipedes) on their microbi-detritivore prey (springtails) and addressed how the habitat structuring effects of the leaf litter modifies this interaction. We performed a series of laboratory functional response experiments where four levels of habitat structure were constructed by adding different amounts of leaf litter to the experimental arenas. We found that increased leaf litter reduced the consumption rate of the predator. We interpreted this as a dilution effect of the augmented habitat size provided by the increasing leaf litter surface available to the species. Dilution of the prey population decreased encounter rates, whereas the capture success was not affected. Interestingly, our results imply that top-down control by centipedes decreased with increasing resource supply for the microbi-detritivore prey (i.e. the leaf litter that simultaneously provides habitat structure). Therefore, effective top-down control of predators on microbi-detritvore populations seems unlikely in litter-rich ecosystems due to the non-trophic, habitat-structuring effect of the basal litter resource. |
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Authors:
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Gregor Kalinkat; Ulrich Brose; Björn Christian Rall |
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Publication Detail:
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Type: JOURNAL ARTICLE Date: 2012-11-28 |
Journal Detail:
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Title: Oecologia Volume: - ISSN: 1432-1939 ISO Abbreviation: Oecologia Publication Date: 2012 Nov |
Date Detail:
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Created Date: 2012-11-28 Completed Date: - Revised Date: - |
Medline Journal Info:
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Nlm Unique ID: 0150372 Medline TA: Oecologia Country: - |
Other Details:
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Languages: ENG Pagination: - Citation Subset: - |
Affiliation:
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J. F. Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, Georg-August-University Göttingen, Berliner Str. 28, 37073, Göttingen, Germany, kalinkat@bio.tu-darmstadt.de. |
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