Linking limitation to species composition: importance of inter- and intra-specific variation in grazing resistance

Oecologia
Tara L Darcy-Hall, Spencer R Hall

Abstract

Short-term responses of producers highlight that key nutrients (e.g., N, P)-or combinations of these nutrients-limit primary production in aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems. These discoveries continue to provide highly valuable insights, but it remains important to ask whether nutrients always predominantly limit producers despite wide variation in nutrient supply and herbivory among systems. After all, predictions from simple food chain models (derived here) readily predict that limitation by grazers can exceed that by nutrients, given sufficient enrichment. However, shifts in composition of producers and/or increasing dominance of invulnerable stages of a producer can, in theory, reduce grazer limitation and retain primacy of nutrient limitation along nutrient supply gradients. We observed both mechanisms (inter- and intra-species variation in vulnerability to herbivory) working in a two-part mesocosm experiment. We incubated diverse benthic algal assemblages for several months either in the presence or absence of benthic macro-grazers in mesocosms that spread a broad range of nutrient supply. We then conducted short-term assays of nutrient and grazer limitation on these communities. In the "historically grazed" assemblages,...Continue Reading

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Citations

Sep 22, 2010·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·David V ViolaJonathan M Levine
May 1, 2008·Ecology Letters·Daniel S GrunerBenjamin M Bolker
Jan 5, 2017·Ecology·Mathew A LeiboldDavid A Lytle

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