AI Article Synopsis
- The study examines how drifting plankton from a reservoir affects downstream food webs and community structures in rivers, particularly within 10 kilometers of a dam.
- Using isotopes and a mixing model, researchers found that plankton contributed significantly to the diets of certain macroinvertebrates, especially just below the dam, but this contribution dropped off as distance increased.
- The findings suggest that the presence of drifting plankton can change the energy sources for aquatic communities downstream, with more diverse and abundant collector-filterers and predators being positively linked to higher zooplankton densities in the water.
Article Abstract
Subsidy between ecosystems has been considered in many natural ecosystems, and should alter food webs and communities in human-impacted ones. We estimated how drifting plankton from a reservoir contribute to downstream food webs and showed that they alter community structures over a 10-km reach below the dam. To estimate the contribution of the drifting plankton to macroinvertebrates, we used C and N isotopes and an IsoSource mixing model. In spring and autumn, contributions of plankton to collector-filterer species were highest 0.2 km downstream of the dam, and clearly decreased from 0.2 to 10 km. At 0.2 km, the contribution of plankton to a predator stonefly was remarkably high. These results indicated that drifting plankton from a dam reservoir could subsidize downstream food webs and alter their energy base, but the importance of this subsidy decreased as distance from the reservoir increased. The general linear models indicated that the abundance of collector-filterers and predators was related positively to zooplankton density in stream water. Thus, food source alteration by drifting plankton also influenced the community structures downstream of the dam.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00442-008-0988-z | DOI Listing |
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