a disease-mediated trophic cascade in the serengeti and its implications for ecosystem c在塞伦盖蒂disease-mediated营养级联及其对生态系统的影响.pdfVIP

A Disease-Mediated Trophic Cascade in the Serengeti and its Implications for Ecosystem C 1 2 3 2 Ricardo M. Holdo *, Anthony R. E. Sinclair , Andrew P. Dobson , Kristine L. Metzger , Benjamin M. 1 4 1 Bolker , Mark E. Ritchie , Robert D. Holt 1 Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States of America, 2 Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, 3 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America, 4 Department of Biology, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, United States of America Abstract Tree cover is a fundamental structural characteristic and driver of ecosystem processes in terrestrial ecosystems, and trees are a major global carbon (C) sink. Fire and herbivores have been hypothesized to play dominant roles in regulating trees in African savannas, but the evidence for this is conflicting. Moving up a trophic scale, the factors that regulate fire occurrence and herbivores, such as disease and predation, are poorly understood for any given ecosystem. We used a Bayesian state- space model to show that the wildebeest population irruption that followed disease (rinderpest) eradication in the Serengeti ecosystem of East Africa led to a widespread reduction in the extent of fire and an ongoing recovery of the tree population. This supports the hypothesis that disease has played a key role in the regulation of this ecosystem. We then link our state-space model with theoretical and empirical results quantifying the effects of grazing and fire on soil carbon to predict that this cascade may have led to important shif