Trophic cascades are indirect positive effects of predators on resources via control of intermediate consumers. Larger-bodied predators appear to induce stronger trophic cascades (a greater rebound of resource density toward carrying capacity), but how this happens is unknown because we lack a clear depiction of how the strength of trophic cascades is determined. Using consumer resource models,...

Ecological communities show great variation in species richness, composition and food web structure across similar and diverse ecosystems. Knowledge of how this biodiversity relates to ecosystem functioning is important for understanding the maintenance of diversity and the potential effects of species losses and gains on ecosystems. While research often focuses on how variation in species rich...

The determinants of the structure, functioning and resilience of pelagic ecosystems across most of the polar regions are not well known. Improved understanding is essential for assessing the value of biodiversity and predicting the effects of change (including in biodiversity) on these ecosystems and the services they maintain. Here we focus on the trophic interactions that underpin ecosystem s...

The consequences of biodiversity loss for ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services have aroused considerable interest during the past decade. Recent work has focused mainly on the impact of species diversity within single trophic levels, both experimentally and theoretically. Experiments have usually showed increased plant biomass and productivity with increasing plant diversity. Changes in...

The diversity and structure of ecosystems has been found to depend both on trophic interactions in food webs and on other species interactions such as habitat modification and mutualism that form non-trophic interaction networks. However, quantification of the dependencies between these two main interaction networks has remained elusive. In this study, we assessed how habitat-modifying organism...

We tested whether standing autotrophic (unicellular algal) biomass is sensitive to variation in initial consumer (nondecomposer, heterotrophic protistan) diversity in experimental microbial microcosms. Our results showed a strong, negative relationship between autotrophic biomass and consumer species richness. Additional microcosm experiments showed that this relationship was due largely to the...

Plant and animal population sizes inevitably change following habitat loss, but the mechanisms underlying these changes are poorly understood. We experimentally altered habitat volume and eliminated top trophic levels of the food web of invertebrates that inhabit rain-filled leaves of the carnivorous pitcher plant Sarracenia purpurea. Path models that incorporated food-web structure better pred...

Trophic organisation defines the flow of energy through ecosystems and is a key component of community structure. Widespread and intensifying anthropogenic disturbance threatens to disrupt trophic organisation by altering species composition and relative abundances and by driving shifts in the trophic ecology of species that persist in disturbed ecosystems. We examined how intensive disturbance...

This study describes changes in the trophic status of 12 lakes within Suwałki Landscape Park (SLP). All of the trophic classifications of the lakes were based on the trophic continuum division. Trophic status was determined by means of multiparameter indices using several diverse criteria. In this study, the assessment of the trophic status of lakes included water quality; abundance and biomass...

We analyzed the variation of fish species richness and trophic structure along an upstream-downstream gradient and identified the factors associated with the pattern observed. The fish community composition varied along a headwater-downstream gradient. Species richness and trophic structure decreased significantly with increasing altitude and increased with stream order and distance from source...