Nutrient Enrichment and Food Web Composition Affect Ecosystem Metabolism in an Experimental Seagrass Habitat 英文参考文献.docVIP

NutrientEnrichmentandFoodWebCompositionAffect EcosystemMetabolisminanExperimentalSeagrass Habitat AmandaC.Spivak¤*,ElizabethA.Canuel,J.EmmettDuffy,J.PaulRichardson VirginiaInstituteofMarineScience,CollegeofWilliamandMary,GloucesterPoint,Virginia,UnitedStatesofAmerica Abstract Background: Food web composition and resource levels can influence ecosystem properties such as productivity and elementalcycles.Inparticular,herbivoresoccupyacentralplaceinfoodwebsasthespeciesrichnessandcompositionof this trophic level may simultaneously influence the transmission of resource and predator effects to higher and lower trophiclevels,respectively.Yet,theseinteractionsarepoorlyunderstood. Methodology/Principal Findings: Using an experimental seagrass mesocosm system, we factorially manipulated water columnnutrientconcentrations,foodchainlength,anddiversityofcrustaceangrazerstoaddresstwoquestions:(1)Does foodwebcompositionmodulatetheeffectsofnutrientenrichmentonplantandgrazerbiomassesandstoichiometry?(2) Do ecosystem fluxes of dissolved oxygen and nutrients more closely reflect above-ground biomass and community structure or sediment processes? Nutrient enrichment and grazer presence generally had strong effects on biomass accumulation,stoichiometry,andecosystemfluxes,whereaspredatoreffectswereweakerorabsent.Nutrientenrichment had little effect on producer biomass or net ecosystem production but strongly increased seagrass nutrient content, ecosystem flux rates, and grazer secondary production, suggesting that enhanced production was efficiently transferred from producers to herbivores. Gross ecosystem production (oxygen evolution) correlated positively with above-ground plantbiomass,whereasinorganicnutrientfluxeswereunrelatedtoplantorgrazerbiomasses,suggestingdominanceby sedimentmicrobialprocesses.Finally,grazerrichnesssignificantlystabilizedecosystemprocesses,aspredatorsdecreased ecosystemproductionandrespirationonlyinthezero-andone-speciesgrazertreatments. Conclusions/Significa