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Integrated trophic position decreases in more diverse communities of stream food webs.
- Source :
-
Scientific reports [Sci Rep] 2017 May 18; Vol. 7 (1), pp. 2130. Date of Electronic Publication: 2017 May 18. - Publication Year :
- 2017
-
Abstract
- 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.
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 2045-2322
- Volume :
- 7
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Scientific reports
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 28522825
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-02155-8