A bioenergetic framework for aboveground terrestrial food webs

Abstract

Bioenergetic approaches have been greatly influential for understanding community functioning and stability and predicting effects of environmental changes on biodiversity. These approaches use allometric relationships to establish species' trophic interactions and consumption rates, and have been most successfully applied to aquatic ecosystems. Terrestrial ecosystems, where body mass is less predictive of plant-consumer interactions, present inherent challenges that these models have yet to meet. Here, we discuss the processes governing terrestrial plant-consumer interactions and develop a bioenergetic framework integrating those processes. Our framework integrates bioenergetics specific to terrestrial plants and their consumers within a food-web approach. It also considers mutualistic interactions, advancing understanding of terrestrial food webs and predictions of their responses to environmental changes.