Pubblicazione scientifica

Integrated trophic position decreases in more diverse communities of stream food webs

FILONE TECNOLOGICO	TEMA
economia circolare e sostenibilità

RIASSUNTO

The relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is an important theme in environmental sciences. We propose a new index for configuration of the biomass pyramid in an ecosystem, named integrated trophic position (iTP). The iTP is defined as a sum of trophic positions (i.e. the average number of steps involved in biomass transfer) of all the animals in a food web integrated by their individual biomass. The observed iTP for stream macroinvertebrates ranged from 2.39 to 2.79 and was negatively correlated with the species density and the Shannon–Wiener diversity index of the local community. The results indicate a lower efficiency of biomass transfer in more diverse communities, which may be explained by the variance in edibility hypothesis and/or the trophic omnivory hypothesis. We found a negative effect of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning.

DATA

Data di pubblicazione: 18/05/2017

AUTORI

ISHIKAWA NAOTO F
CHIKARAISHI YOSHITO
OHKOUCHI NAOHIKO
MURAKAMI AYA R
TAYASU ICHIRO
TOGASHI HIROYUKI
OKANO JUN-ICHI
SAKAI YOICHIRO
IWATA TOMOYA
KONDOH MICHIO
OKUDA NOBORU

RIVISTA

Scientific Reports, 7, 2130

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