Journal
ECOLOGY
Volume 89, Issue 11, Pages 3001-3007Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1890/07-1990.1
Keywords
Anolis lizards; Bahamian islands; disturbance; ecosystem size; food-chain length; food web; omnivory; orb spiders; predation; stable isotope; trophic position
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Funding
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [KAKENHI 03J09516, 19870022]
- U. S. National Science Foundation [DEB-0316679, DEB-9904121, DEB-0516431]
- Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research [19870022] Funding Source: KAKEN
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Ecologists have long struggled to explain variation in food-chain length among natural ecosystems. Food-chain length is predicted to be shorter in ecosystems subjected to greater disturbance because longer chains are theoretically less resilient to perturbation. Moreover, food-chain length is expected to be longer in larger ecosystems because increasing ecosystem size increases species richness and stabilizes predator-prey interactions, or increases total resource availability. Here we test the roles of disturbance and ecosystem size in determining the food-chain length of terrestrial food webs on Bahamian islands. We found that disturbance affected the identity of top predators, but did not change food-chain length because alternative top predators occupied similar trophic positions. On the other hand, a 10(6)-fold increase in ecosystem size elevated food-chain length by one trophic level. We suggest that the effect of disturbance on food-chain length is weak when alternate top predators are trophic omnivores and have similar trophic positions. This and previous work in lakes suggest that ecosystem size may be a strong determinant of food-chain length in both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.
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