The paradox of inverted biomass pyramids in kelp forest fish communities

Trebilco, Rowan; Dulvy, Nicholas K.; Anderson, Sean C.; Salomon, Anne K.

doi:10.1098/rspb.2016.0816

Cited by 45 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…), prompting debate on their theoretical feasibility (Trebilco et al . ; Woodson et al . ) and criticism that they arise as an artifact of sampling bias (Bradley et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural variation in coral reef trophic structure across environmental gradients

Heenan

Williams

2019

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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Policies designed to address current challenges to the sustainability of fisheries generally use an ecosystem‐based approach – one that incorporates interactions between fishes, fishers, and the environment. Fishing alters the trophic structure among coral reef fish but properly assessing those impacts requires an understanding of how and why that structure varies naturally across scales. Using a combination of small‐ and large‐scale surveys, we generated biomass pyramids for 20 uninhabited Pacific islands, and found that (1) the distribution of reef fish biomass across trophic levels is highly scale dependent: trophic structures that appear top‐heavy at small scales can take a variety of different states when data are integrated across the broader seascape; (2) reefs can have the greatest biomass at intermediate consumer levels, which we describe as “middle‐driven” systems; and (3) in unfished coral reef systems, trophic structure is strongly predicted by energy into the base and middle of the food web, as well as by the interacting effect of water temperature.

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“…), prompting debate on their theoretical feasibility (Trebilco et al . ; Woodson et al . ) and criticism that they arise as an artifact of sampling bias (Bradley et al .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural variation in coral reef trophic structure across environmental gradients

Heenan

Williams

2019

Frontiers in Ecol & Environ

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“…, Meehan , Trebilco et al. ). Their existence, however, is often attributed to continuous subsidies from external habitats, migration of top predators across ecosystem boundaries or temporal storage effects (Mourier et al.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food quantity–quality interactions and their impact on consumer behavior and trophic transfer

Burian

Nielsen

Winder

2019

Ecological Monographs

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Food quantity–quality interactions determine growth rates and reproductive success of consumers and thereby regulate community dynamics and food web structure. Predator–prey models that shape our conceptual understanding of foraging ecology typically rely on the parametrization of fixed consumer responses to either food quantity or food quality. In nature, however, consumers optimize their fitness by responding simultaneously to changes in food quantity and quality. Therefore, we assessed consumer responses to changing food environments using a new fitness optimization model that accounted for food quality–quantity interactions to better capture the regulatory flexibility of consumers. Our simulations demonstrated that the impact of food quality on important consumer traits can be altered or even reversed by changes in food quality. Low food quality, for example, affected feeding rates negatively at low food concentrations but triggered surplus feeding at high food concentrations. The scope of surplus feeding was thereby mainly dependent on dynamics of nutrient digestion and in contrast to previous assumptions, energy costs of feeding played a minor role. Further, the regulation of digestive enzyme production, a crucial factor determining assimilation efficiencies, was strongly dependent on whether nonessential or essential nutrients were limiting growth. Consequently, not only the degree but also the type of nutrient limitation mediated the impact of the food environment on consumers’ fitness. At the community level, food quality was key in shaping predator–prey biomass ratios. High food qualities resulted in top‐heavy systems with larger consumer than prey biomass. Decreases of prey digestibility or the availability of essential nutrients, however, triggered a switch from inverted to classical pyramid shapes of bi‐trophic systems. The impact of food quantity on trophic transfer and emerging structural ecosystem properties thus critically hinges on behavioral and physiological responses of consumers. The inclusion of the regulatory flexibility of consumers is therefore an essential next step to improve predator–prey models and our conceptual understanding of trophic interactions.

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“…These principles seem to apply to closed systems, but allochthonous subsidies could lead to deviations from predicted M‐N scaling in more open systems (Trebilco et al . , ), especially if this additional energy is not uniformly accessible throughout the food web. Thus allochthonous subsidies could release consumers from energetic constraints that otherwise determine the M‐N relationship within the food web (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bending the rules: exploitation of allochthonous resources by a top‐predator modifies size‐abundance scaling in stream food webs

et al. 2018

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Body mass–abundance (M‐N) allometries provide a key measure of community structure, and deviations from scaling predictions could reveal how cross‐ecosystem subsidies alter food webs. For 31 streams across the UK, we tested the hypothesis that linear log‐log M‐N scaling is shallower than that predicted by allometric scaling theory when top predators have access to allochthonous prey. These streams all contained a common and widespread top predator (brown trout) that regularly feeds on terrestrial prey and, as hypothesised, deviations from predicted scaling increased with its dominance of the fish assemblage. Our study identifies a key beneficiary of cross‐ecosystem subsidies at the top of stream food webs and elucidates how these inputs can reshape the size‐structure of these ‘open’ systems.

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The paradox of inverted biomass pyramids in kelp forest fish communities

Cited by 45 publications

References 54 publications

Natural variation in coral reef trophic structure across environmental gradients

Natural variation in coral reef trophic structure across environmental gradients

Food quantity–quality interactions and their impact on consumer behavior and trophic transfer

Bending the rules: exploitation of allochthonous resources by a top‐predator modifies size‐abundance scaling in stream food webs

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