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Potapov AM, Drescher J, Darras K, Wenzel A, Janotta N, Nazarreta R, Kasmiatun, Laurent V, Mawan A, Utari EH, Pollierer MM, Rembold K, Widyastuti R, Buchori D, Hidayat P, Turner E, Grass I, Westphal C, Tscharntke T, Scheu S. Rainforest transformation reallocates energy from green to brown food webs. Nature 2024; 627:116-122. [PMID: 38355803 PMCID: PMC10917685 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07083-y] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/21/2022] [Accepted: 01/16/2024] [Indexed: 02/16/2024]
Abstract
Terrestrial animal biodiversity is increasingly being lost because of land-use change1,2. However, functional and energetic consequences aboveground and belowground and across trophic levels in megadiverse tropical ecosystems remain largely unknown. To fill this gap, we assessed changes in energy fluxes across 'green' aboveground (canopy arthropods and birds) and 'brown' belowground (soil arthropods and earthworms) animal food webs in tropical rainforests and plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. Our results showed that most of the energy in rainforests is channelled to the belowground animal food web. Oil palm and rubber plantations had similar or, in the case of rubber agroforest, higher total animal energy fluxes compared to rainforest but the key energetic nodes were distinctly different: in rainforest more than 90% of the total animal energy flux was channelled by arthropods in soil and canopy, whereas in plantations more than 50% of the energy was allocated to annelids (earthworms). Land-use change led to a consistent decline in multitrophic energy flux aboveground, whereas belowground food webs responded with reduced energy flux to higher trophic levels, down to -90%, and with shifts from slow (fungal) to fast (bacterial) energy channels and from faeces production towards consumption of soil organic matter. This coincides with previously reported soil carbon stock depletion3. Here we show that well-documented animal biodiversity declines with tropical land-use change4-6 are associated with vast energetic and functional restructuring in food webs across aboveground and belowground ecosystem compartments.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anton M Potapov
- Animal Ecology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.
- German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
- Insitute of Biology, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
| | | | - Kevin Darras
- Agroecology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Arne Wenzel
- Functional Agrobiodiversity, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Noah Janotta
- Animal Ecology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Rizky Nazarreta
- Department of Plant Protection, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia
| | - Kasmiatun
- Department of Plant Protection, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia
| | | | - Amanda Mawan
- Animal Ecology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Endah H Utari
- Department of Plant Protection, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia
| | | | - Katja Rembold
- Botanical Garden of University of Bern, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Biodiversity, Macroecology & Biogeography, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | | | - Damayanti Buchori
- Department of Plant Protection, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia
- Centre for Transdisciplinary and Sustainability Sciences, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia
| | - Purnama Hidayat
- Department of Plant Protection, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia
| | - Edgar Turner
- Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
| | - Ingo Grass
- Ecology of Tropical Agricultural Systems, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany
| | - Catrin Westphal
- Functional Agrobiodiversity, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | | | - Stefan Scheu
- Animal Ecology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
- Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use, University of Göttigen, Göttingen, Germany
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Polazzo F, Hermann M, Crettaz-Minaglia M, Rico A. Impacts of extreme climatic events on trophic network complexity and multidimensional stability. Ecology 2023; 104:e3951. [PMID: 36484732 PMCID: PMC10078413 DOI: 10.1002/ecy.3951] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/20/2022] [Revised: 09/27/2022] [Accepted: 11/07/2022] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
Untangling the relationship between network complexity and ecological stability under climate change is an arduous challenge for theoretical and empirical ecology. Even more so, when considering extreme climatic events. Here, we studied the effects of extreme climatic events (heatwaves) on the complexity of realistic freshwater ecosystems using topological and quantitative trophic network metrics. Next, we linked changes in network complexity with the investigation of four stability components (temporal stability, resistance, resilience, and recovery) of community's functional, compositional, and energy flux stability. We found reduction in topological network complexity to be correlated with reduction of functional and compositional resistance. However, temperature-driven increase in link-weighted network complexity increased functional and energy flux recovery and resilience, but at the cost of increased compositional instability. Overall, we propose an overarching approach to elucidate the effects of climate change on multidimensional stability through the lens of network complexity, providing helpful insights for preserving ecosystems stability under climate change.
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Affiliation(s)
- Francesco Polazzo
- IMDEA Water Institute, Science and Technology Campus of the University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain
| | - Markus Hermann
- Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
| | - Melina Crettaz-Minaglia
- IMDEA Water Institute, Science and Technology Campus of the University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain
| | - Andreu Rico
- IMDEA Water Institute, Science and Technology Campus of the University of Alcalá, Madrid, Spain.,Cavanilles Institute of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, University of Valencia, Valencia, Spain
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Antunes AC, Gauzens B, Brose U, Potapov AM, Jochum M, Santini L, Eisenhauer N, Ferlian O, Cesarz S, Scheu S, Hirt MR. Environmental drivers of local abundance–mass scaling in soil animal communities. OIKOS 2022. [DOI: 10.1111/oik.09735] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Ana Carolina Antunes
- Inst. of Biodiversity, Friedrich Schiller Univ. Jena Jena Germany
- EcoNetLab, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig Leipzig Germany
| | - Benoit Gauzens
- Inst. of Biodiversity, Friedrich Schiller Univ. Jena Jena Germany
- EcoNetLab, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig Leipzig Germany
| | - Ulrich Brose
- Inst. of Biodiversity, Friedrich Schiller Univ. Jena Jena Germany
- EcoNetLab, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig Leipzig Germany
| | - Anton M. Potapov
- Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Inst. of Zoology and Anthropology, Univ. of Goettingen Goettingen Germany
| | - Malte Jochum
- Experimental Interaction Ecology, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig Leipzig Germany
- Inst. of Biology, Leipzig Univ. Leipzig Germany
| | - Luca Santini
- Dept of Biology and Biotechnologies ‘Charles Darwin', Sapienza Univ. of Rome Rome Italy
| | - Nico Eisenhauer
- Experimental Interaction Ecology, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig Leipzig Germany
- Inst. of Biology, Leipzig Univ. Leipzig Germany
| | - Olga Ferlian
- Experimental Interaction Ecology, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig Leipzig Germany
- Inst. of Biology, Leipzig Univ. Leipzig Germany
| | - Simone Cesarz
- Experimental Interaction Ecology, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig Leipzig Germany
- Inst. of Biology, Leipzig Univ. Leipzig Germany
| | - Stefan Scheu
- Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Inst. of Zoology and Anthropology, Univ. of Goettingen Goettingen Germany
- Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use Göttingen Germany
| | - Myriam R. Hirt
- Inst. of Biodiversity, Friedrich Schiller Univ. Jena Jena Germany
- EcoNetLab, German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle‐Jena‐Leipzig Leipzig Germany
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Food web rewiring drives long-term compositional differences and late-disturbance interactions at the community level. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2022; 119:e2117364119. [PMID: 35439049 PMCID: PMC9173581 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2117364119] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Multiple anthropogenic disturbances affect the structure and functioning of communities. Recent evidence highlighted that, after pulse disturbance, the functioning a community performs may be recovered fast due to functional redundancy, whereas community multivariate composition needs a longer time. Yet, the mechanisms that drive the different community recovery times have not been quantified empirically. We use quantitative food-web analysis to assess the influence of species interactions on community recovery. We found species-interactions strength to be the main mechanism driving differences between structural and functional recovery. Additionally, we show that interactions between multiple disturbances appear in the long term only when both species-interaction strength and food-web architecture change significantly. Ecological communities are constantly exposed to multiple natural and anthropogenic disturbances. Multivariate composition (if recovered) has been found to need significantly more time to be regained after pulsed disturbance compared to univariate diversity metrics and functional endpoints. However, the mechanisms driving the different recovery times of communities to single and multiple disturbances remain unexplored. Here, we apply quantitative ecological network analyses to try to elucidate the mechanisms driving long-term community-composition dissimilarity and late-stage disturbance interactions at the community level. For this, we evaluate the effects of two pesticides, nutrient enrichment, and their interactions in outdoor mesocosms containing a complex freshwater community. We found changes in interactions strength to be strongly related to compositional changes and identified postdisturbance interaction-strength rewiring to be responsible for most of the observed compositional changes. Additionally, we found pesticide interactions to be significant in the long term only when both interaction strength and food-web architecture are reshaped by the disturbances. We suggest that quantitative network analysis has the potential to unveil ecological processes that prevent long-term community recovery.
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Potapov AM. Multifunctionality of belowground food webs: resource, size and spatial energy channels. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2022; 97:1691-1711. [PMID: 35393748 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12857] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/21/2021] [Revised: 03/25/2022] [Accepted: 03/28/2022] [Indexed: 01/17/2023]
Abstract
The belowground compartment of terrestrial ecosystems drives nutrient cycling, the decomposition and stabilisation of organic matter, and supports aboveground life. Belowground consumers create complex food webs that regulate functioning, ensure stability and support biodiversity both below and above ground. However, existing soil food-web reconstructions do not match recently accumulated empirical evidence and there is no comprehensive reproducible approach that accounts for the complex resource, size and spatial structure of food webs in soil. Here I build on generic food-web organisation principles and use multifunctional classification of soil protists, invertebrates and vertebrates, to reconstruct a 'multichannel' food web across size classes of soil-associated consumers. I infer weighted trophic interactions among trophic guilds using feeding preferences and prey protection traits (evolutionarily inherited traits), size and spatial distributions (niche overlaps), and biomass-dependent feeding. I then use food-web reconstruction, together with assimilation efficiencies, to calculate energy fluxes assuming a steady-state energetic system. Based on energy fluxes, I propose a number of indicators, related to stability, biodiversity and multiple ecosystem-level functions such as herbivory, top-down control, translocation and transformation of organic matter. I illustrate this approach with an empirical example, comparing it with traditional resource-focused soil food-web reconstruction. The multichannel reconstruction can be used to assess 'trophic multifunctionality' (analogous to ecosystem multifunctionality), i.e. simultaneous support of multiple trophic functions by the food web, and compare it across communities and ecosystems spanning beyond the soil. With further empirical validation of the proposed functional indicators, this multichannel reconstruction approach could provide an effective tool for understanding animal diversity-ecosystem functioning relationships in soil. This tool hopefully will inspire more researchers to describe soil communities and belowground-aboveground interactions comprehensively. Such studies will provide informative indicators for including consumers as active agents in biogeochemical models, not only locally but also on regional and global scales.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anton M Potapov
- Johann Friedrich Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, Animal Ecology, University of Göttingen, Untere Karspüle 2, 37073, Göttingen, Germany.,A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Russian Academy of Sciences, Leninsky Prospect 33, 119071, Moscow
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Zhou Z, Krashevska V, Widyastuti R, Scheu S, Potapov A. Tropical land use alters functional diversity of soil food webs and leads to monopolization of the detrital energy channel. eLife 2022; 11:75428. [PMID: 35357306 PMCID: PMC9033302 DOI: 10.7554/elife.75428] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/09/2021] [Accepted: 03/29/2022] [Indexed: 11/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Agricultural expansion is among the main threats to biodiversity and functions of tropical ecosystems. It has been shown that conversion of rainforest into plantations erodes biodiversity, but further consequences for food-web structure and energetics of belowground communities remains little explored. We used a unique combination of stable isotope analysis and food-web energetics to analyze in a comprehensive way consequences of the conversion of rainforest into oil palm and rubber plantations on the structure of and channeling of energy through soil animal food webs in Sumatra, Indonesia. Across the animal groups studied, most of the taxa had lower litter-calibrated Δ13C values in plantations than in rainforests, suggesting that they switched to freshly-fixed plant carbon ('fast' energy channeling) in plantations from the detrital C pathway ('slow' energy channeling) in rainforests. These shifts led to changes in isotopic divergence, dispersion, evenness, and uniqueness. However, earthworms as major detritivores stayed unchanged in their trophic niche and monopolized the detrital pathway in plantations, resulting in similar energetic metrics across land-use systems. Functional diversity metrics of soil food webs were associated with reduced amount of litter, tree density, and species richness in plantations, providing guidelines on how to improve the complexity of the structure of and channeling of energy through soil food webs. Our results highlight the strong restructuring of soil food webs with the conversion of rainforest into plantations threatening soil functioning and ecosystem stability in the long term.
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Affiliation(s)
- Zheng Zhou
- JF Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Valentyna Krashevska
- JF Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Rahayu Widyastuti
- Department of Soil Sciences and Land Resources, Institut Pertanian Bogor, Bogor, Indonesia
| | - Stefan Scheu
- JF Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
| | - Anton Potapov
- JF Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany
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