Trophic interactions in changing landscapes: responses of soil food webs.

By Katarina Hedlund, B. Griffiths, S. Christensen, S. Scheu, H. Setälä, T. Tscharntke, H. Verhoef. 2004

134 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Soil communities in landscapes that are rapidly changing due to a range of anthropogenic processes can be regarded as highly transient systems where interactions between competing species or trophic levels may be seriously disrupted. In disturbed communities dispersal in space and time has a role in ensuring continuity of community function. Stable communities, in undisturbed systems, are more dependent on competition and other biotic interactions between species. We predicted how food web components would respond to disturbance, based on their dispersal and colonizing abilities. During decomposition, flows of energy and nutrients generally follow either a bacterial-based path, with bacteria as the primary decomposer and bacterial-feeding fauna and their predators forming the associated food web, or a fungal-based channel. Trophic links that were generally resistant to change were the organisms of the bacterial. pathway that have high abilities to disperse in time and passively disperse in space. Organisms in the fungal pathway were less resistant to disturbance. Resource inputs to the soil system are derived from plants, either through root exudation and root turnover during active growth or from dead plant material following senescence or agricultural tillage. Disturbances to the soil system can arise as a direct action on the soil, or indirectly from effects on the above-ground plant community. Disturbance-induced changes in plant community composition will change the soil food web composition. Organisms involved in direct interactions with plants (e.g. AM-mycorrhizal fungi) were also predicted to be vulnerable to disturbance. (C) 2004 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. (Less)

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/815a64334a10a1dc360b2d09888fcdf3eb9679ea

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Citations in the corpus

From peds to paradoxes: linkages between soil biota and their influences on ecological processes. (2008, background): “Noting some significant differences in bacterial- and fungal-based soil food webs, with organisms in the latter pathway considered more sensitive to disturbance, Hedlund et al. (2004) concluded that disturbance-induced changes in plant community composition will change the soil food web composition.”
Landscape moderation of biodiversity patterns and processes ‐ eight hypotheses (2012, background): “On the other hand, soil biota may be influenced by landscape processes, but our perception of the landscape needs to be scaled down to the level at which it actually influences soil biota (Hedlund et al., 2004; Flohre et al., 2011).”
Multifunctional shade‐tree management in tropical agroforestry landscapes – a review (2011, background): “most species respond to their environment on this level, including spillover across managed systems and natural habitat (Hedlund et al. 2004; Tscharntke et al. 2005, 2008; Vandermeer & Perfecto 2007).”
Carbon fluxes in soil food webs of increasing complexity revealed by 14C labelling and 13C natural abundance (2006, background): “Moore (1994) and Hedlund et al. (2004) found, that organisms connected to the fungal channel were more sensitive to disturbance, so earthworms could be seen as a disturbance for the fungal channel organisms.”
Effects of agricultural management on nematode–mite assemblages: Soil food web indices as predictors of mite community composition (2009, background): “…intensity reduces mite populations (Bedano et al., 2006) including Oribatida (fungivore/saprophyte) and the predatory Gamasina, some of the mite taxa most sensitive to soil perturbation; their abundances may be reduced to 50% after tillage (House and Parmelee, 1985; Hülsmann and Wolters, 1998).”
Suppressive service of the soil food web: Effects of environmental management (2007, background): “Understanding the function of soil food webs is an important priority for soil ecologists (Hedlund et al., 2004).”
Fifteen years of climate change manipulations alter soil microbial communities in a subarctic heath ecosystem (2007, background): “Shifts in the ratio of fungi to bacteria, for example, would influence ecosystem food web structure, because fungal and bacterial decomposer pathways channel different food webs (Hedlund et al., 2004).”
Conservation biological control and enemy diversity on a landscape scale (2007, background): “The microorganisms, herbivores, and natural enemies involved in such multitrophic-level interactions likely respond to landscape heterogeneity at very different spatial scales (van Nouhuys and Hanski, 2002; Hedlund et al., 2004; Tscharntke et al., 2005b).”
Using functional groups to investigate community response to environmental changes: two grassland case studies (2007, background): “This suggests that disturbed communities will be more susceptible to climatic effects, and that the buffering of these effects by community complexity decreases with increasing trophic level (Fig. 5c; Griffiths et al., 2000; Hedlund et al., 2004).”