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Despite potential to structure ecosystem food webs through top-down effects, the trophic interactions of the American Eel Anguilla rostrata remain largely understudied. All previous research on the trophic ecology of American Eel in inland aquatic ecosystems has been conducted in temperate continental regions of the species' range. These studies have led to a paradigm that American Eel is a nocturnally...
A long standing interest in ecology has been to understand the effects of abiotic factors on organisms and their interactions within ecological communities. This understanding has become increasingly important in light of rapid anthropogenic climate change. One of the most under-studied aspects of climate change is changing wind speed, which is generally decreasing in terrestrial environments globally...
Excessive soil salinity is a global and growing problem for agroecosystems. Changing weather patterns, land use patterns, and the use of salinized irrigation water are all exacerbating the threat of soil salinity. High concentrations of salts in the soils are well known for their (usually detrimental) effects on plants. However, very little is known about how those changes in plants will go on to...
Microzooplankton play an important connecting role in the aquatic food webs. During our bimonthly time series observation on microzooplankton ecology and dynamics in the estuarine waters of Kochi, Southwest coast of India, dense swarming of Tintinnopsis uruguayensis was noticed. The contribution of T. uruguayensis during the swarm period was 98.4% of the total microzooplankton density. The swarming...
Predicting food web responses to climate change can be difficult because of the potentially complex interplay between co-occurring climate variables and multiple interacting species across trophic levels. The large majority of research in this field has focused on understanding the effects of single climate variables on species at one or two trophic levels, implicitly assuming that simultaneous shifts...
Shifts in abiotic conditions can strongly influence not only the demography, ecology, and evolution of individual species, but also the networks of interactions that structure communities and ecosystems. Though many studies have addressed how changes in mean temperature or rainfall patterns will affect ecosystems, there has been far less attention on the impact of changing snow regimes. As climate...
The eastern phoebe (Sayornis phoebe) is an insectivorous bird that sometimes consumes ectoparasites. Previous accounts indicate that phoebes may indirectly benefit mammals by consuming parasites found in vegetation reducing the probability of tick encounters. As part of an experiment quantifying community-level vertebrate interactions relative to plant community structure, we continuously monitored...
We used stable isotope ratio and gut content analyses to determine and compare the feeding ecology of two commercially important predator species, Lophius piscatorius and Lophius budegassa in the Celtic sea, where data concerning their trophic ecology remain sparse. This study included two areas and two size-classes, showing that anglerfish in the Celtic sea are mainly piscivorous top predators as...
Allen and colleagues contend that the study designs used to test for indirect effects of large carnivores on lower trophic levels are limited insomuch as they “rely on weak inference when valuing the roles of large carnivores in ecosystems.” Based upon their review of gray wolf and dingo studies, they conclude “that evidence for the ecological roles” (i.e., top-down effect) of these species is “equivocal...
Trophic cascades have been assigned an exaggerated even mythic status by some ecologists, but they are only one type of pathway in a complicated food web. The human mind is drawn to patterns like the proverbial ‘moth to the flame’. The distinctive checkerboard pattern of alternating +−+−+ changes in populations on adjacent trophic levels in a trophic cascade is no exception. Unfortunately, this pattern...
Phenological cascades can occur in food webs when the timing of biological activity at one trophic level responds to timing at an adjacent trophic level. Such cascades may therefore be precipitated by changes in abiotic factors that constrain phenology. Arctic marine food webs comprise a series of coupled trophic interactions from primary producers to tertiary consumers under strong temporal control...
The response of complex ecological communities to ocean acidification reflects interactions among species that propagate or dampen ecological change. Yet, most studies have been based on short-term experiments with limited numbers of interacting species. Both limitations tend to exaggerate measured effects and when combined with our predisposition for investigating change, we reduce insight into pathways...
The assumptions ecologists make both influence and constrain their conclusions. Too often these assumptions are not explored or validated rigorously enough. The purpose of this paper is to critically review seven trophic cascade assumptions frequently used in the current literature and to identify whether their conclusions are compatible with results from loop analysis. Assumptions center upon food...
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