Productivity controls food-chain properties in microbial communities

Christina M. K. Kaunzinger () and Peter J. Morin
Additional contact information
Christina M. K. Kaunzinger: Evolution & Natural Resources, Rutgers University
Peter J. Morin: Evolution & Natural Resources, Rutgers University

Nature, 1998, vol. 395, issue 6701, 495-497

Abstract: Abstract Food webs provide a framework for integrating population dynamics, community structure and ecosystem processes, but the causes of many food-web patterns remain controversial1. An unresolved issue concerns the factors that limit food-chain length in natural ecosystems, although theory predicts that length could be limited by inefficient energy transfer between trophic levels2 orby the instability of longer food chains3. Experiments provide qualitative support for the instability of longer food chains4, but, according to theory, this relationship may depend on the assumptions used to model food chains5. Here we show that experimental manipulations of productivity determine the length of microbial food chains in laboratory microcosms. Food-chain length is also predicted to determine how productivity influences population densities within trophic levels. If trophic levels consist entirely ofedible prey, and if consumers feed only on the next-lower trophic level6, population densities should alternate between increasing and constant values as food-chain length increases (Fig. 1). We find that food-chain length determines population-level responses to productivity, which is consistent with predictions from models. These results indicate that the impacts of human alterations of productivity will depend crucially on the structure of the affected food chains. Figure 1 The pattern of abundance within trophic levels expected in response to increases in productivity in food-chain models. Solid line, trophic level 1; dotted and dashed line, trophic level 2; dotted line, trophic level 3. Modified from ref. 20.

Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/26741 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nature:v:395:y:1998:i:6701:d:10.1038_26741

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

DOI: 10.1038/26741

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

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