Ontogenetic asymmetry modulates population biomass production and response to harvest.
Nat Commun 2015;
6:6441. [PMID:
25737320 PMCID:
PMC4366502 DOI:
10.1038/ncomms7441]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/21/2013] [Accepted: 01/29/2015] [Indexed: 12/03/2022] Open
Abstract
Patterns in biomass production are determined by resource input (productivity) and trophic transfer efficiency. At fixed resource input, variation in consumer biomass production has been related to food quality, metabolic type and diversity among species. In contrast, intraspecific variation in individual body size because of ontogenetic development, which characterizes the overwhelming majority of taxa, has been largely neglected. Here we show experimentally in a long-term multigenerational study that reallocating constant resource input in a two-stage consumer system from an equal resource delivery to juveniles and adults to an adult-biased resource delivery is sufficient to cause more than a doubling of total consumer biomass. We discuss how such changes in consumer stage-specific resource allocation affect the likelihood for alternative stable states in harvested populations as a consequence of stage-specific overcompensation in consumer biomass and thereby the risk of catastrophic collapses in exploited populations.
The effect of intraspecific body size variation on the efficiency with which energy is transferred between trophic levels is not well understood. Here, Reichstein et al. show that biasing resource delivery toward less efficient consumer life stages can lead to a doubling of consumer biomass.
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