The role of land use in terrestrial support of boreal lake food webs

Ossi Keva (), Matthew R. D. Cobain, Antti P. Eloranta, Heikki Hämäläinen, Mikko Kiljunen, Jos Schilder and Roger I. Jones
Additional contact information
Ossi Keva: University of Jyväskylä
Matthew R. D. Cobain: University of Jyväskylä
Antti P. Eloranta: University of Jyväskylä
Heikki Hämäläinen: University of Jyväskylä
Mikko Kiljunen: University of Jyväskylä
Jos Schilder: University of Jyväskylä
Roger I. Jones: University of Jyväskylä

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract There is growing awareness of the importance of cross-boundary energy and nutrient transfers between adjacent ecosystems. Lake ecosystems receive inputs of terrestrial organic matter that microbes can make available to higher level consumers. However, how environmental drivers influence this terrestrial support of benthic and pelagic consumers at multiple trophic levels remains underexplored. Using hydrogen stable isotopes as a tracer of terrestrial organic matter, we find large variation in terrestrial support of aquatic consumers (i.e., consumer allochthony) among 35 boreal lakes. Of 19 different aquatic organisms, benthic consumers show the highest allochthony. Consumer allochthony decreases along an environmental gradient from forested to agricultural catchments, likely due to shifts in the origin and nature of lake organic matter. Our results demonstrate how cross-ecosystem transfer of organic matter can influence community dynamics in recipient ecosystems, with anthropogenic management of donor terrestrial ecosystems affecting the structure and function of food webs in recipient aquatic ecosystems.

Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-58505-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:16:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-025-58505-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-58505-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().