Transfer efficiency of carbon, nutrients, and polyunsaturated fatty acids in planktonic food webs under different environmental conditions

Karpowicz, Maciej; Feniova, I. Yu.; Gladyshev, Michail I.; Ejsmont-Karabin, Jolanta; Górniak, Andrzej; Sushchik, Nadezhda N.; Анищенко, О. В.; Dzialowski, Andrew R.

doi:10.1002/ece3.7651

Cited by 17 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 89 publications

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“…S3) potentially due to overfishing [47]. In turn, other human activities, such as chemical pollution or habitat destruction, can reduce transfer efficiency through affecting nutrient availability [48]. Using fully protected areas, we have corroborated the existence of a positive genuine cause-effect relationship between full marine protection and top-heavy structures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

Protection promotes energetically efficient structures in marine communities

Tabi

Gilarranz

Saavedra

2022

Preprint

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Protecting and restoring the structure of marine communities is critical for supporting many bio-physical processes including human well-being. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can successfully help to protect the abundance of target marine species, however, we know little about the cause-effect relationship between MPAs and community-wide properties of fish communities under the context of climate change and anthropogenic disturbances. Here, we show that MPAs mediate anthropogenic and climatic effects on fish diversity, while they directly increase by 28% the probability that a fish community displays a higher-than-average pyramid-like structure: energetically efficient systems with small basal species as the most abundant and large apex predators as the least abundant. To quantify these causal effects, we integrate a nonparametric causal-inference approach with ecological theory and observational data from 286 geographical sites with more than 1,400 fish species. Our work provides a quantitative platform to study how different factors may protect and restore marine communities.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

Protection promotes energetically efficient structures in marine communities

Tabi

Gilarranz

Saavedra

2022

Preprint

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“…But with further P enrichment, FCE started to decline, due to the relatively lower herbivore and predator efficiencies. This result may suggest a disadvantages of high nutrients for food web efficiency (Karpowicz et al 2021), due to for example, differences in responding magnitudes between primary producers and apex consumers to nutrient enrichment (Fig. S2).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Energy transfer efficiency rather than productivity determines trophic cascades

Zhou

Luo

Hong

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Trophic cascades are important determinants of food web dynamics and functioning, yet mechanisms explaining variations in trophic cascade strength remain elusive. Here we combine a mesocosm experiment (phytoplankton-zooplankton-shrimp) and theoretical models to disentangle the relative importance of two processes driving trophic cascade: primary productivity (productivity hypothesis) and energy transfer efficiency (energy transfer hypothesis). Our experimental systems showed consistently positive effects of trophic cascade across mesocosms with different nutrient inputs and zooplankton communities. Moreover, the strength of trophic cascade increased with the energy transfer efficiency between herbivores and predators, but did not change with the primary productivity. These findings are further corroborated by our analyses of food chain models in more general settings. Combined, our results support the energy transfer hypothesis but falsify the productivity hypothesis. Our study contributes an integrative perspective to reconcile energetic and population dynamics in food webs, which has useful implications for ecosystem management.

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“…Diet switching of cladocerans has been recorded to reflect the cladoceran FA profiles with a 6–7 day time lag (Taipale et al, 2009, 2011) and thus our dietary estimates reflect only a very narrow timescale in summer and not the situation for the whole open water season. However, the differences in the estimated seston composition and cladoceran diets are likely since cladocerans may assimilate the PUFAs of different food sources differently and retain the most valuable PUFAs for growth (Kainz et al, 2004; Karpowicz et al, 2021; Taipale et al, 2011). Phytoplankton communities are known to form spatially distinct patches with different algae groups (Reynolds, 2006) and Daphnia may be able to locate high nutritional quality patches (Schatz & McCauley, 2007; Taipale, Aalto, et al, 2019) and modify their filtering rate when low‐ or high‐quality food is available.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Herbivorous cladoceran essential fatty acid and cholesterol content across a phosphorous and DOC gradients of boreal lakes—Importance of diet selection

et al. 2023

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1. Eutrophication has been shown to increase production of nutritionally low-quality cyanobacteria and decrease the long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) content of seston. Contrarily, lake browning inhibits cyanobacteria contribution in seston and favours poorly grazable mixotrophic algal species. These environmental changes have probable impacts on the diet and long-chain PUFA content of primary consumers. However, herbivorous zooplankton may preferentially retain PUFAs through diet selection for optimal growth and reproduction, but such selective feeding is challenging to document in nature owing to the difficulties in quantifying zooplankton diet.2. Here, we sampled seston and herbivorous cladocerans (Daphnia sp. and Bosmina sp.) from lakes (n = 23) in Finland along eutrophication (total phosphorous) and browning gradients (dissolved organic carbon [DOC]). We analysed the fatty acid content of seston (mg FA/g POC [particular organic content]) and cladocerans (mg FA/g C), and estimated available and consumed diet biomass percentages with quantitative fatty acid signature analysis. Cladoceran diet preference was evaluated as the difference between consumed and available food sources, to understand if they preferentially retain high nutritional quality diet.3. Generally, lake chemistry and morphometry poorly explained seston and cladoceran long-chain PUFA contents. However, multiple linear models for shorter chain PUFAs (linoleic acid [LA] and alpha-linolenic acid [ALA]) performed better in explaining variation in the LA and ALA content of seston (20% and 11%) and cladocerans (36% and 46%, respectively). The factors most strongly and positively associated with the LA and ALA content of seston and cladocerans were phosphorus and DOC concentrations, respectively. 4. Seston and cladoceran PUFA contents were clearly uncorrelated. In most of the sampled lakes, high-quality diet (i.e., diatoms and cryptomonads) was preferred by cladocerans and low-quality diet (cyanobacteria) was avoided. Lake chemistry poorly explained cladoceran diet preference, but high-quality preference was positively associated with lake average depth.

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Transfer efficiency of carbon, nutrients, and polyunsaturated fatty acids in planktonic food webs under different environmental conditions

Abstract: This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Cited by 17 publications

References 89 publications

Protection promotes energetically efficient structures in marine communities

Protection promotes energetically efficient structures in marine communities

Energy transfer efficiency rather than productivity determines trophic cascades

Herbivorous cladoceran essential fatty acid and cholesterol content across a phosphorous and DOC gradients of boreal lakes—Importance of diet selection

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