Publications by authors named "Oksana L Rozanova"
Direct trophic links between aboveground and belowground animal communities are rarely considered in food web models. Most invertebrate animals inhabiting aboveground space eventually become prey of soil predators and scavengers forming a gravity-driven spatial subsidy to detrital food webs, but its importance remains unquantified. We used laboratory-grown N-labeled Collembola to trace the incorporation of arthropod rain into soil food webs.
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- - The study explores "arthropod rain," which consists of invertebrates falling from the forest canopy to the ground, and its significance as a food source for other organisms in the litter layer.
- - Measurements showed that arthropod rain invertebrates had lower stable carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) isotopes than soil-dwelling animals, indicating their unique contribution to detrital food webs.
- - The differences in isotopic composition were mainly influenced by wingless arthropods like Collembola and aphids, while winged insects had isotopic profiles similar to those in the soil, suggesting a diverse source for these organisms in the ecosystem.
Size-structured food webs form integrated trophic systems where energy is channeled from small to large consumers. Empirical evidence suggests that size structure prevails in aquatic ecosystems, whereas in terrestrial food webs trophic position is largely independent of body size. Compartmentalization of energy channeling according to size classes of consumers was suggested as a mechanism that underpins functioning and stability of terrestrial food webs including those belowground, but their structure has not been empirically assessed across the whole size spectrum.
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