Trophic cascades across ecosystems

被引:397
作者
Knight, TM [1 ]
McCoy, MW
Chase, JM
McCoy, KA
Holt, RD
机构
[1] Univ Florida, Dept Zool, Gainesville, FL 32611 USA
[2] Washington Univ, Dept Biol, St Louis, MO 63130 USA
关键词
D O I
10.1038/nature03962
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Predation can be intense, creating strong direct and indirect effects throughout food webs(1-4). In addition, ecologists increasingly recognize that fluxes of organisms across ecosystem boundaries can have major consequences for community dynamics(5,6). Species with complex life histories often shift habitats during their life cycles(7) and provide potent conduits coupling ecosystems(5,6). Thus, local interactions that affect predator abundance in one ecosystem ( for example a larval habitat) may have reverberating effects in another ( for example an adult habitat). Here we show that fish indirectly facilitate terrestrial plant reproduction through cascading trophic interactions across ecosystem boundaries. Fish reduce larval dragonfly abundances in ponds, leading to fewer adult dragonflies nearby. Adult dragonflies consume insect pollinators and alter their foraging behaviour. As a result, plants near ponds with fish receive more pollinator visits and are less pollen limited than plants near fish-free ponds. Our results confirm that strong species interactions can reverberate across ecosystems, and emphasize the importance of landscape-level processes in driving local species interactions.
引用
收藏
页码:880 / 883
页数:4
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