Published October 4, 2023
| Version v1
Dataset
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Data for: Ecosystem connectivity and configuration can mediate instability at a distance in metaecosystems
Description
- Ecosystems are connected by flows of nutrients and organisms. Changes to connectivity and nutrient enrichment may destabilise ecosystem dynamics far from the nutrient source.
- We used gradostats to examine the effects of trophic connectivity (movement of consumers and producers) versus nutrient-only connectivity on the dynamics of Daphnia pulex (consumers) and algae (resources) in two metaecosystem configurations (linear vs. dendritic).
- We found that Daphnia peak population size and instability (coefficient of variation; CV) increased as distance from the nutrient input increased, but these effects were lower in metaecosystems connected by all trophic levels compared to nutrient-only connected systems and/or in dendritic compared to linear systems.
- We examined the effects of trophic connectivity (i.e. both trophic levels move rather than one or the other) using a generic model to qualitatively assess whether the expectations align with the ecosystem dynamics we observed.
- Analysis of our model shows that increased Daphnia population sizes and fluctuations in consumer-resource dynamics are expected with nutrient connectivity, with this pattern being more pronounced in linear rather than dendritic systems.
- These results confirm that connectivity may propagate and even amplify instability over a metaecosystem to communities distant from the source disturbance, and suggest a direction for future experiments, that recreate conditions closer to those found in natural systems.
Notes
Funding provided by: Canada First Research Excellence Fund
Crossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100010785
Award Number: 0004-2015
Files
dapalg1.csv
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