Grazer diversity effects in an eelgrass–epiphyte–microphytobenthos system

The dramatic loss of biodiversity and its consequences for ecosystem processes have been of considerable interest in recent ecological studies. However, the complex and interacting processes influencing diversity effects in multitrophic systems are still poorly understood. We used an experimental eelgrass system to study the effects of changing richness of three consumer species on the biomass, diversity and taxonomic composition of both epiphytic and benthic microalgal assemblages. After 1 week, consumer richness enhanced the grazing impact on epiphyte biomass relative to single consumer treatments and a positive effect of consumer richness on prey diversity was found. Moreover, strong effects of consumer species identity on taxonomic composition were found in both microalgal assemblages. However, the effects of consumer richness were not consistent over time. The consequences of high nutrient availability seemed to have masked consumer richness effects.

• Publication year

  2008

• Venue

  Oecologia

• Publication date

  2008-12-10

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1007/s00442-008-1236-2PMID 19082631PMCID 2757588
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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