Ecological effects of El Niño in terrestrial ecosystems of western South America

By Fabian M Jaksic. 2001

207 citations recorded by the source corpus.

I make a summary review of how El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) determines peculiar atmospheric and oceanographic conditions in western South America, thus affecting precipitation patterns in adjacent land masses, with cascading effects on marine and terrestrial plants, on sea and land birds, and on marine and terrestrial mammals. With regard to terrestrial ecosystems, I discuss the following biotic responses to El Nino-driven precipitation: 1) aboveground vegetation flushes immediately among herbs but not among shrubs. 2) The seed bank is quickly replenished of ephemeral seeds, but perennial seeds recover one year later. 3) Small rodents Irrupt within months of El Nino arrival, but larger ones take a full year to increase. 4) Predator numbers lag one year behind their mammal prey, with smaller predators responding more quickly. Considering these responses, I offer a simplified model of El Nino-driven bottom-up control in terrestrial ecosystems of western South America. Apart from the direct links already described, there is a weak feedback loop between the plant compartments (vegetation and seeds) and their herbivores: primary productivy is the driving force, and is little affected by herbivory. Another weak feedbaek loop links herbivores and their predators: the latter seem to just “surf” over prey levels, skimming excess prey.

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6076c38334143ba6f37a66d03140e1d91d2f6114

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Citations in the corpus

Islands and introduced herbivores: conservation action as ecosystem experimentation (2002, background): “As a result, ENSO-related precipitation events have large impacts on arid ecosystems (Brown & Heske 1990; Meserve et al. 1999; Jaksic 2001).”
What can we learn from resource pulses? (2008, background): “…examples of resource pulses that fit this broad definition include periods of unusually heavy precipitation (Polis et al. 1997, Grant et al. 2000, Jaksic 2001); the mast production of flowers, fruits, or seeds (Kelly 1994, Wolff 1996, Ostfeld et al. 1996, Curran and Leighton 2000, McShea 2000);…”
RECOVERY AND GENETIC DIVERSITY OF THE INTERTIDAL KELP LESSONIA NIGRESCENS (PHAEOPHYCEAE) 20 YEARS AFTER EL NIÑO 1982/831 (2003, background): “…novelty of these changes makes it difficult for the scientific com- munity to make accurate predictions for the whole system but the recovery of some key ecosystem engineer or habitat-forming species (Jones et al. 1994, Coleman and Williams 2002) may help to understand the magnitude of the impact.”
Food web structure and climate effects on the dynamics of small mammals and owls in semi‐arid Chile (2002, background): “The generally hypothesised causal chain from ENSO to increased rainfall to higher primary productivity and finally to higher small mammal density (Jaksic 2001), may be a fitting description of population variations in non-outbreak species regulated mainly by intra-specific competition and limited by”
The Response of Terrestrial Ecosystems to Climate Variability Associated with the North Atlantic Oscillation (2013, background): “For ENSO two reviews have recently been published [Holmgren et al., 2001; Jaksic, 2001].”
Thirteen Years of Shifting Top-Down and Bottom-Up Control (2003, background): “…for understanding the interaction of biotic and abiotic factors in semiarid or arid systems, because population densities often are low, and abiotic events such as ENSO (and intervening La Niñas characterized by extreme drought) occur at long temporal scales (about 2 to 7 years; Jaksic 2001).”