Meta-Ecosystems 2.0: Rooting the Theory into the Field

Gounand, Isabelle; Harvey, Éric; Little, Chelsea J.; Altermatt, Florian

doi:10.1016/j.tree.2017.10.006

Cited by 183 publications

(264 citation statements)

References 76 publications

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“…Despite numerous potential applications of the meta‐ecosystem concept (Loreau et al, ), meta‐ecosystem ecology has been, so far, mostly theoretical (Gounand, Harvey, et al, ). This study illustrates resource fluxes between adjacent ecosystems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The concept of meta‐ecosystems focuses on fluxes among individual ecosystems constituting a meta‐ecosystem. These fluxes are considered reciprocal when the biomass of the secondary producers of the recipient ecosystem later flows back to the donor ecosystem by, for instance, migrating animals (Gounand, Harvey, Little, & Altermatt, ; Loreau et al, ; Soininen, Bartels, Heino, Luoto, & Hillebrand, ). However, at the interface between stream ecosystems and the terrestrial habitat, lateral movements are common.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Litter movement pathways across terrestrial–aquatic ecosystem boundaries affect litter colonization and decomposition in streams

Abelho

Descals

2019

Functional Ecology

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Streams and their riparian zones are connected by spatial flows of organic matter and constitute a model example of a meta‐ecosystem. Fluxes of leaf litter from the riparian zone to the stream are a major energy source in stream food webs. Leaf litter can enter the stream vertically, falling from the tree and into the stream, or laterally, washing into the stream after a period of exposure in the terrestrial ecosystem. The latter can contribute up to 23% to the total amount of litterfall entering streams. To determine if decomposition, microbial and invertebrate colonization of lateral litter inputs are similar to those of vertical inputs, we assessed leaf decomposition of alder, poplar and a 1:1 mixture of the two species in three scenarios across a gradient of terrestrial:aquatic exposures. Overall, decomposition was explained by a negative exponential model and decreased with the increase in the period of terrestrial exposure in all cases. Invertebrate colonization tended to decrease with the increase in the period of terrestrial exposure, but total invertebrate richness and biomass were more affected by litter type than by the exposure scenario, attaining higher values in the mixture than in the species alone. As the length of exposure in the terrestrial ecosystem increased, in‐stream decomposition rates of leaf litter decreased. Comparing leaf species treatments, alder decomposition rates were faster than poplar and the alder–poplar mixture. The richness of the aquatic hyphomycete community colonizing leaf litter after submergence decreased, and sporulation rates were strongly inhibited with an increasing terrestrial exposure period. While fungi colonizing leaf litter exposed only in the stream invested in rapid reproduction, fungi colonizing litter with prior terrestrial exposure built up more biomass. We conclude that the path taken by the litter fluxes has important effects on the functioning of the receiving ecosystem. Studies relying only on the fate of freshly abscissed leaf litter (vertical inputs) may not present a complete picture of the decomposition process in streams and may have been overestimating the overall richness and reproductive activity of the aquatic hyphomycetes colonizing leaf litter.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Litter movement pathways across terrestrial–aquatic ecosystem boundaries affect litter colonization and decomposition in streams

Abelho

Descals

2019

Functional Ecology

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“…These three spatial use properties have recently been highlighted as key to understanding spatial flows of energy in meta‐ecosystems (Gounand et al . ), but their effects on metacommunity dynamics and coexistence are not well understood.…”

Section: Spatial Use Properties and Their Consequences For Pairwise Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a multi‐trophic extension of metacommunity ecology

et al. 2018

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Metacommunity theory provides an understanding of how spatial processes determine the structure and function of communities at local and regional scales. Although metacommunity theory has considered trophic dynamics in the past, it has been performed idiosyncratically with a wide selection of possible dynamics. Trophic metacommunity theory needs a synthesis of a few influential axis to simplify future predictions and tests. We propose an extension of metacommunity ecology that addresses these shortcomings by incorporating variability among trophic levels in ‘spatial use properties’. We define ‘spatial use properties’ as a set of traits (dispersal, migration, foraging and spatial information processing) that set the spatial and temporal scales of organismal movement, and thus scales of interspecific interactions. Progress towards a synthetic predictive framework can be made by (1) documenting patterns of spatial use properties in natural food webs and (2) using theory and experiments to test how trophic structure in spatial use properties affects metacommunity dynamics.

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“…, Gounand et al. ). Therefore, as a first approximation, we may expect spatial cascades triggered by each movement type to display different properties and effects on the connected local communities (Fig.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial trophic cascades in communities connected by dispersal and foraging

García‐Callejas

Molowny‐Horas

Araújo

et al. 2019

Ecology

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Pairwise interactions between species have both direct and indirect consequences that reverberate throughout the whole ecosystem. In particular, interaction effects may propagate in a spatial dimension, to localities connected by organismal movement. Here we study the propagation of interaction effects with a spatially explicit metacommunity model, where local sites are connected by dispersal, foraging, or by both types of movement. We show that indirect pairwise effects are, in most cases, of the same sign as direct effects if localities are connected by dispersing species. However, if foraging is prevalent, this correspondence is broken, and indirect effects between species often have a different sign than direct effects. This highlights the importance of indirect interactions across space and their inherent unpredictability in complex settings with species foraging across local patches. Further, the effect of a species over another in a local patch does not necessarily correspond to its effect at the metacommunity scale; this correspondence is again mediated by the type of movement across localities. Every species, despite their trophic position or spatial range, displays a non‐zero net effect over every other species in our model metacommunities. Thus we show that local dynamics and local interactions between species can trigger indirect effects all across the set of connected patches, and these effects have a distinct signature depending on whether the prevalent connection between patches is via dispersal or via foraging. However, the magnitude of this effect between any two species strongly decays with the distance between them. These theoretical results strengthen the importance of considering indirect effects across species at both the community and metacommunity levels, highlight the differences between types of movement across locations, and thus open novel avenues for the study of interaction effects in spatially explicit settings.

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Meta-Ecosystems 2.0: Rooting the Theory into the Field

Cited by 183 publications

References 76 publications

Litter movement pathways across terrestrial–aquatic ecosystem boundaries affect litter colonization and decomposition in streams

Litter movement pathways across terrestrial–aquatic ecosystem boundaries affect litter colonization and decomposition in streams

Towards a multi‐trophic extension of metacommunity ecology

Spatial trophic cascades in communities connected by dispersal and foraging

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