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Increasing frequency and magnitude of climatic extremes, such as heat waves are expected to enhance abiotic stresses on ecological communities. It has been proposed that ecological communities in disturbed habitats may be most sensitive to climatic extremes, as disturbance may reduce density and diversity of higher trophic level organisms like predators. However, there is little experimental evidence that climatic extremes indeed have stronger impact on functioning of such trophically downgraded ecosystems. Here, we experimentally examine how removal of predators from soil communities affects plant performance under periodic heat waves. We used a native plant species, and a congeneric native that is currently expanding its range because of climate change. We used soil nematode communities as the model system, as these are most abundant soil animals and their communities are trophically diverse. Predatory nematodes were manually removed from intact soil nematode communities (mainly the adults as some juveniles are impossible to manually remove) to create a trophically downgraded soil. Intact nematode communities and communities with reduced predatory nematodes were added separately to soils that were planted with either the native Centaurea jacea or the range-expanding congener Centaurea stoebe. Half the experimental units were exposed periodically to experimental heat waves of 10 °C above the control temperature. Our results show that the C: N and C: N: P ratio of plant shoots in predator-reduced soils became lower when exposed to periodic heat waves, however, only in the native plant C. jacea. The decrease in C: N ratio corresponded with increase of an herbivorous nematode in trophically intact soils of C. jacea independent of warming, whereas this relationships disappeared in warmed and predator-reduced soils. Our results accordingly highlight that periodic heat waves may affect stoichiometry of certain plant species by altering trophic interactions in predator-reduced soils.

The stoichiometric constraints of algal growth are well understood, whereas there is less knowledge for heterotrophic bacterioplankton. Growth of the marine bacterium Phaeobacter inhibens DSM 17395, belonging to the globally distributed Roseobacter group, was studied across a wide concentration range of NH4+ and PO43−. The unique dataset covers 415 different concentration pairs, corresponding to 207 different molar N:P ratios (from 10−2 to 105). Maximal growth (by growth rate and biomass yield) was observed within a restricted concentration range at N:P ratios (∼50−120) markedly above Redfield. Experimentally determined growth parameters deviated to a large part from model predictions based on Liebig's law of the minimum, thus implicating synergistic co-limitation due to biochemical dependence of resources. Internal elemental ratios of P. inhibens varied with external nutrient supply within physiological constraints, thus adding to the growing evidence that aquatic bacteria can be flexible in their internal elemental composition. Taken together, the findings reported here revealed that P. inhibens is well adapted to fluctuating availability of inorganic N and P, expected to occur in its natural habitat (e.g. colonized algae, coastal areas). Moreover, this study suggests that elemental variability in bacterioplankton needs to be considered in the ecological stoichiometry of the oceans., Phaeobacter inhibens DSM 17395, member of the marine Roseobacter group, grows optimally at N:P supply ratios >16, exhibits phytoplankton-like flexible internal elemental stoichiometry and different nutrients control growth synergistically.

Plant Ecology, 176 (1), ISSN:1385-0237, ISSN:1573-5052