Megafaunal Impacts on Structure and Function of Ocean Ecosystems

By J. Estes, Michael R. Heithaus, D. McCauley, D. Rasher, Boris Worm. 2016

230 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Here, we identify the extant species of marine megafauna (>45 kg maximum reported mass), provide a conceptual template for the ways in which these species influence the structure and function of ocean ecosystems, and review the published evidence for such influences. Ecological influences of more than 90% of the 338 known species of extant ocean megafauna are unstudied and thus unknown. The most widely known effect of those few species that have been studied is direct prey limitation, which occurs through consumption and risk avoidance behavior. Consumer-prey interactions result in indirect effects that extend through marine ecosystems to other species and ecological processes. Marine megafauna transport energy, nutrients, and other materials vertically and horizontally through the oceans, often over long distances. The functional relationships between these various ecological impacts and megafauna population densities, in the few well-studied cases, are characterized by phase shifts and hysteresis.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2a9320e4a90ceda18447d16dd99b4ed84caf80b3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

1. M. Hayward
2. W. Ripple
3. T. Newsome
4. B. Van Valkenburgh
5. S. Bograd
6. M. Jacox
7. William J. Sydeman
8. E. Hazen

In Global and Planetary Change

1. S. Bograd
2. M. Jacox
3. William J. Sydeman
4. E. Hazen
5. Boris Worm
6. K. Scales
7. F. Courchamp
8. W. Ripple

Citations in the corpus

• Are we eating the world's megafauna to extinction? (2019, background): “The ongoing loss of megafauna alters the structure and function of their ecosystems, often in ways that are surprising and disruptive (Estes et al., 2011, 2016).”
• Marine top predators as climate and ecosystem sentinels (2019, background): “…of sentinel species, including (1) exhibiting clear responses to environmental variability or change (Sydeman et al. 2015; Fleming et al. 2016), (2) playing important roles in shaping marine food webs (Estes et al. 2016), and (3) indicating anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems (Sergio et al. 2008).”