Trophic switches in pelagic systems

Trophic cascades promote threshold-like shifts in pelagic marine ecosystems.

Fisheries can have a large impact on marine ecosystems, because the effects of removing large predatory fish may cascade down the food web. The implications of these cascading processes on system functioning and resilience remain a source of intense scientific debate. By using field data covering a 30-year period, we show for the Baltic Sea that the underlying mechanisms of trophic cascades pro...

Trophic versus geographic structure in stable isotope signatures of pelagic seabirds breeding in the northeast Atlantic

Feeding ecology and geographic location are 2 major factors influencing animal stable isotope signatures, but their relative contributions are poorly understood, which limits the usefulness of stable isotope analysis in the study of animal ecology. To improve our knowledge of the main sources of isotopic variability at sea, we determined δ15N and δ13C signatures in the first primary feather of ...

Trophic Structure and Carbon Flow Dynamics in the Pelagic Community of a Large Lake

Longer Food Chains in Pelagic Ecosystems: Trophic Energetics of Animal Body Size and Metabolic Efficiency.

Factors constraining the structure of food webs can be investigated by comparing classes of ecosystems. We find that pelagic ecosystems, those based on one-celled primary producers, have longer food chains than terrestrial ecosystems. Yet pelagic ecosystems have lower primary productivity, contrary to the hypothesis that greater energy flows permit higher trophic levels. We hypothesize that lon...

Did the iron fertilization near Haida Gwaii in 2012 affect the pelagic lower trophic level ecosystem?

Deliberate fertilization of a patch of water west of Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, with iron sulphate and oxide occurred in summer 2012 and triggered a phytoplankton bloom strongly visible in satellite imagery in late August and detectable through September 2012. Routine sampling by the Continuous Plankton Recorder Survey from commercial ships occurred in the vicinity of the fertilized patch b...