Phosphorus Contents in Desert Riparian Spiders and Insects Vary among Taxa and Between Flight Capabilities

Wiesenborn, William D.

doi:10.1653/024.096.0206

Cited by 14 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Previous studies have shown that the P content of carnivores is higher (Cross et al, ; González et al, ; Lemoine et al, ; Wiesenborn, ) or the same (Martinson et al, ; Schneider et al, ) as that of detritivores. In this study, trophic group differences in P content depended on site, suggesting that some of the divergent results between previous studies reflect local conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…While previous studies have provided valuable insights into organismal stoichiometry, most of the work to date has been conducted using either literature-compiled databases (Fagan et al, 2002), or at local scales (González et al, 2011;Schneider et al, 2010;Wiesenborn, 2013;Woods et al, 2004), and has focused on a few closely related species, especially dipterans (Bertram, Bowen, Kyle, & Schade, 2008;Hämback et al, 2009). Very few studies have quantified the contribution of evolutionary history to animal stoichiometry from natural communities (but see González et al, 2011) or across geographical scales (see Kaspari & Powers, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ecological mechanisms and phylogeny shape invertebrate stoichiometry: A test using detritus‐based communities across Central and South America

et al. 2018

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Stoichiometric differences among organisms can affect trophic interactions and rates of nutrient cycling within ecosystems. However, we still know little about either the underlying causes of these stoichiometric differences or the consistency of these differences across large geographical extents. Here, we analyse elemental (carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus) composition of 872 aquatic macroinvertebrates (71 species) inhabiting tank bromeliads (n = 140) from five distantly located sites across Central and South America to (i) test phylogenetic, trophic and body size scaling explanations for why organisms differ in elemental composition and (ii) determine whether patterns in elemental composition are universal or context dependent. Taxonomy explained most variance in elemental composition, even though phylogenetic signals were weak and limited to regional spatial extents and to the family level. The highest elemental contents and lowest carbon:nutrient ratios were found in organisms at high trophic levels and with smaller body size, regardless of geographical location. Carnivores may have higher nutrient content and lower carbon:nutrient ratios than their prey, as organisms optimize growth by choosing the most nutrient‐rich resources to consume and then preferentially retain nutrients over carbon in their bodies. Smaller organisms grow proportionally faster than large organisms and so are predicted to have higher nutrient requirements to fuel RNA and protein synthesis. Geography influenced the magnitude, more than the direction, of the ecological and/or phylogenetic effects on elemental composition. Overall, our results show that both ecological (i.e. trophic group) and evolutionary drivers explain among‐taxa variation in the elemental content of invertebrates, whereas intraspecific variation is mainly a function of body size. Our findings also demonstrate that restricting analyses of macroinvertebrate stoichiometry solely to either the local scale or species level affects inferences of the patterns in invertebrate elemental content and their underlying mechanisms. A http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13197/suppinfo is available for this article.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecological mechanisms and phylogeny shape invertebrate stoichiometry: A test using detritus‐based communities across Central and South America

et al. 2018

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“…Stoichiometric traits, have been measured for a large number of very different species: primary producers (Reich and Oleksyn, 2004;Peñuelas et al, 2008Peñuelas et al, , 2010Reich, 2014), phytoplankton (Klausmeier et al, 2004;Litchman and Klausmeier, 2008;Quigg et al, 2011), microorganisms (Mouginot et al, 2014;Godwin and Cotner, 2015), invertebrates (Fagan et al, 2002;Woods et al, 2004;Hambäck et al, 2009;González et al, 2011a;Wiesenborn, 2011Wiesenborn, , 2013Lemoine et al, 2014), and vertebrates (Torres and Vanni, 2007;González et al, 2011a), allowing across-species comparisons. For plants, studies on functional traits have revealed the existence of adaptive trait continua, which describes the phenotypic space of trait variation produced by evolutionary processes (Donovan et al, 2011;Carnicer et al, 2015;Diaz et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussion and Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Niche

et al. 2017

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The niche concept is essential to understanding how biotic and abiotic factors regulate the abundance and distribution of living entities, and how these organisms utilize, affect and compete for resources in the environment. However, it has been challenging to determine the number and types of important niche dimensions. By contrast, there is strong mechanistic theory and empirical evidence showing that the elemental composition of living organisms shapes ecological systems, from organismal physiology to food web structure. We propose an approach based on a multidimensional elemental view of the ecological niche. Visualizing the stoichiometric composition of individuals in multivariate space permits quantification of niche dimensions within and across species. This approach expands on previous elemental characterizations of plant niches, and adapts metrics of niche volume, overlap and nestedness previously used to quantify isotopic niches. We demonstrate the applicability of the multidimensional stoichiometric niche using data on carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus of terrestrial and freshwater communities composed by multiple trophic groups. First, we calculated the stoichiometric niche volumes occupied by terrestrial and freshwater food webs, by trophic groups, by individual species, and by individuals within species, which together give a measure of the extent of stoichiometric diversity within and across levels of organization. Then we evaluated complementarity between these stoichiometric niches, through metrics of overlap and nestedness. Our case study showed that vertebrates, invertebrates, and primary producers do not overlap in their stoichiometric niches, and that large areas of stoichiometric space are unoccupied by organisms. Within invertebrates, niche differences emerged between freshwater and terrestrial food webs, and between herbivores and non-herbivores (detritivores and predators). These niche differences were accompanied by changes in the covariance structure of the three elements, suggesting fundamental shifts in organismal physiology and/or structure. We also demonstrate the sensitivity of results to sample size, and suggest that representative sampling is better than rarefaction in characterizing the stoichiometric niche occupied by food webs. Overall, our approach demonstrates that stoichiometric traits provide a common currency to estimate the dimensionality of stoichiometric niches, and help reduce and rationalize the number of axis required to characterize communities.

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“…(2004), for example, the C:N TER in a predator–prey interaction is given by:

{TER}_{C : N} = false(C:N prey false/ C:N predator false) > {normalα}_{normalN} / {normalα}_{normalC}

where C:N prey and C:N predator are the C:N in prey and predator biomass, and α N is the maximum gross growth efficiency for N (i.e., fraction of ingested N that the predator converts into new biomass), α C is the maximum gross growth efficiency for C (i.e., fraction of ingested C that the predator converts into new biomass). To calculate the TER for each spider, we used a gross growth efficiency α C = 0.65 C and α N = 0.70 (Fagan & Denno, 2004; Fagan et al., 2002; Matsumura et al., 2004; Wiesenborn, 2013), and two values for α PL = 0.6 (low maximum gross growth efficiency; Lehman, 1993) and α PH (high maximum gross growth efficiency; DeMott, Gulati, & Siewertsen, 1998; Frost et al., 2006). Values for α N /α C = 1.077, α PL /α C = 0.923, α PH /α C = 1.333, and α PL /α N = 0.857, and α PH /α N = 1.143.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caught in the web: Spider web architecture affects prey specialization and spider–prey stoichiometric relationships

Ludwig

Barbour

Guevara

et al. 2018

Ecology and Evolution

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Quantitative approaches to predator–prey interactions are central to understanding the structure of food webs and their dynamics. Different predatory strategies may influence the occurrence and strength of trophic interactions likely affecting the rates and magnitudes of energy and nutrient transfer between trophic levels and stoichiometry of predator–prey interactions. Here, we used spider–prey interactions as a model system to investigate whether different spider web architectures—orb, tangle, and sheet‐tangle—affect the composition and diet breadth of spiders and whether these, in turn, influence stoichiometric relationships between spiders and their prey. Our results showed that web architecture partially affects the richness and composition of the prey captured by spiders. Tangle‐web spiders were specialists, capturing a restricted subset of the prey community (primarily Diptera), whereas orb and sheet‐tangle web spiders were generalists, capturing a broader range of prey types. We also observed elemental imbalances between spiders and their prey. In general, spiders had higher requirements for both nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) than those provided by their prey even after accounting for prey biomass. Larger P imbalances for tangle‐web spiders than for orb and sheet‐tangle web spiders suggest that trophic specialization may impose strong elemental constraints for these predators unless they display behavioral or physiological mechanisms to cope with nutrient limitation. Our findings suggest that integrating quantitative analysis of species interactions with elemental stoichiometry can help to better understand the occurrence of stoichiometric imbalances in predator–prey interactions.

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Phosphorus Contents in Desert Riparian Spiders and Insects Vary among Taxa and Between Flight Capabilities

Cited by 14 publications

References 20 publications

Ecological mechanisms and phylogeny shape invertebrate stoichiometry: A test using detritus‐based communities across Central and South America

Ecological mechanisms and phylogeny shape invertebrate stoichiometry: A test using detritus‐based communities across Central and South America

The Multidimensional Stoichiometric Niche

Caught in the web: Spider web architecture affects prey specialization and spider–prey stoichiometric relationships

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