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7 - Body size and trophic cascades in lakes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

By
J. Iwan Jones  and
Erik Jeppesen
Edited by
Alan G. Hildrew ,
David G. Raffaelli  and
Ronni Edmonds-Brown
J. Iwan Jones
Affiliation:
Centre for Ecology and Hydrology UK
Erik Jeppesen
Affiliation:
National Environmental Research Institute; University of Aarhus Denmark
Alan G. Hildrew
Affiliation:
Queen Mary University of London
David G. Raffaelli
Affiliation:
University of York
Ronni Edmonds-Brown
Affiliation:
University of Hertfordshire
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Summary

Introduction

Since its first appearance (Hairston, Smith & Slobodkin, 1960), the hypothesis that predation can structure communities has courted controversy (Shapiro, Lamarra & Lynch, 1975; Strong, 1992; McCann, Hastings & Strong, 1998). Nearly 50 years later there is still ongoing debate over the importance of predation relative to other factors limiting the growth of populations (Pace et al., 1999; Holt, 2000; Polis et al., 2000; Power, 2000), and the conditions that cause the effect of predation to cascade through the community (Polis & Strong, 1996; Schmitz, Krivan & Ovadia, 2004; Borer et al., 2005; Vander Zanden, Essington & Vadeboncoeur, 2005). With the discovery of predator impacts on the structure and dynamics of a diversity of real communities (Paine, 1980; Power, Matthews & Stewart, 1985; Carpenter & Kitchell, 1993), it became apparent that higher trophic levels could affect the biomass and dynamics of not only their prey, but of their prey's prey and, hence, the whole community. Earlier it was assumed that communities were typically pyramidal in structure, with declining biomass in each successive trophic level, and the dynamics of each trophic level dependent upon those of their prey and ultimately the primary producers/basal resources (Whittaker, 1961). It is now clear from habitats as diverse as Californian islands (Roemer, Donlan & Courchamp, 2002), the forests of Yellowstone Park (Ripple & Beschta, 2004) and the cod banks of the North Atlantic (Worm & Myers, 2003; Frank et al. 2005) that this assumption is not correct, such that nowadays the predictions of the trophic cascade influence how we manage our natural environment (Scheffer, 1998).

Type
Chapter
Information
Body Size: The Structure and Function of Aquatic Ecosystems , pp. 118 - 139
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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