Journal
ECOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 11, Issue 12, Pages 1328-1337Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2008.01252.x
Keywords
African savanna ecosystems; allochthonous fluxes; dietary reconstructions; donor control; food-web stability; interaction strengths; predator-prey interactions; spatial subsidies; stable isotopes; trophic levels
Categories
Funding
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0934734] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Understanding food-web dynamics requires knowing whether species assemblages are compartmentalized into distinct energy channels, and, if so, how these channels are structured in space. We used isotopic analyses to reconstruct the food web of a Kenyan wooded grassland. Insect prey were relatively specialized consumers of either C-3 (trees and shrubs) or C-4 (grasses) plants. Arboreal predators (arthropods and geckos) were also specialized, deriving c. 90% of their diet from C-3-feeding prey. In contrast, ground-dwelling predators preyed considerably upon both C-3- and C-4-feeding prey. This asymmetry suggests a gravity-driven subsidy of the terrestrial predator community, whereby tree-dwelling prey fall and are consumed by ground-dwelling predators. Thus, predators in general couple the C-3 and C-4 components of this food web, but ground-dwelling predators perform this ecosystem function more effectively than tree-dwelling ones. Although prey subsidies in vertically structured terrestrial habitats have received little attention, they are likely to be common and important to food-web organization.
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