PMID: 11607573Aug 29, 1995Paper

Evolutionary consequences of food chain length in kelp forest communities

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
P D SteinbergF C Winter

Abstract

Kelp forests are strongly influenced by macroinvertebrate grazing on fleshy macroalgae. In the North Pacific Ocean, sea otter predation on macroinvertebrates substantially reduces the intensity of herbivory on macroalgae. Temperate Australasia, in contrast, has no known predator of comparable influence. These ecological and biogeographic patterns led us to predict that (i) the intensity of herbivory should be greater in temperate Australasia than in the North Pacific Ocean; thus (ii) Australasian seaweeds have been under stronger selection to evolve chemical defenses and (iii) Australasian herbivores have been more strongly selected to tolerate these compounds. We tested these predictions first by measuring rates of algal tissue loss to herbivory at several locations in Australasian and North Pacific kelp forests. There were significant differences in grazing rates among sea otter-dominated locations in the North Pacific (0-2% day-1), Australasia (5-7% day-1), and a North Pacific location lacking sea otters (80% day-1). The expectations that chronically high rates of herbivory in Australasia have selected for high concentrations of defensive secondary metabolites (phlorotannins) in brown algae and increased tolerance of these d...Continue Reading

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Citations

Mar 12, 2004·Annual Review of Entomology·C W HoyF R Hall
Jan 24, 2007·Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution·Scott L Nuismer, John N Thompson
Nov 25, 2003·Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution·Erik E SotkaMark E Hay
Jul 5, 2012·Evolution; International Journal of Organic Evolution·Ian S Pearse, Andrew L Hipp
Apr 5, 2017·Ecology·Richard K ZimmerJoseph A Loo
Jul 10, 2019·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Katharine R HindPatrick T Martone
Oct 22, 2019·Ecology Letters·Luis Abdala-RobertsChrister Björkman
Nov 20, 2016·Ecology·John M O'Brien, Robert E Scheibling
Jul 21, 2017·Ecology and Evolution·Craig W BenkmanMatthew V Talluto
Oct 4, 2020·Ecology·Emma A Elliott SmithSeth D Newsome

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