Terrestrial vertebrate predators drive the structure and functioning of aquatic food webs.

Predators that forage at boundaries between ecosystems can affect prey from adjacent ecosystems, thereby triggering consumptive and non-consumptive cascading effects, which may affect diversity and food web structure across ecosystems. In the present study, we manipulated the access of insectivorous birds, lizards, and anurans to tank bromeliads in scrub vegetation in southern Brazil. We measured cascading effects on the community structure of aquatic invertebrates inhabiting bromeliad leaves and on the ecosystem processes of decomposition rate and bromeliad growth.