2023 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Conference
March 5-7, 2023 • Cincinnati, OH
5/20/2019 | 9:00 AM - 9:15 AM | ANTHROPOGENIC CHANGE INFLUENCES WETLAND FOOD WEBS AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTION: EVIDENCE FOR TROPHIC DOWNGRADING? | 251 AB
ANTHROPOGENIC CHANGE INFLUENCES WETLAND FOOD WEBS AND ECOSYSTEM FUNCTION: EVIDENCE FOR TROPHIC DOWNGRADING?
Trophic downgrading occurs when removal of predators alters the structure and function of food webs. While evidence of top-down influences on food webs is pervasive in the literature, most evidence supporting trophic downgrading comes from case studies where large vertebrate predators were extirpated from food webs by extreme anthropogenic pressures. Further, most evidence of top-down trophic cascades comes from studies of relatively simple, single food chains. Using DNA metabarcoding to characterize aquatic communities provides a standardized, sensitive method for rapid species detection and community assessment, but it does not yield requisite trait information for food web construction. We combined DNA metabarcoding with trait matching to create heuristic food webs for the Grand Lake Meadows, Atlantic Canada’s largest freshwater wetland. We asked: (1) how does anthropogenic change influence the properties of heuristic food webs, and (2) how do food web properties correlate with leaf litter decomposition? We provide evidence that anthropogenic change has led to trophic downgrading in a wetland invertebrate food web, which is associated with depressed decomposition rates. We explore how the loss of invertebrate predators could adversely influence ecosystem functions, even in relatively intact, undisturbed systems.
- Food Webs
- Genetics
- Functional Ecology
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Presenters/Authors
Zacchaeus Compson
(), University of North Texas, zacchaeus.greg.compson@gmail.com;
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Wendy Monk
(), Environment and Climate Change Canada @ Canadian Rivers Institute, Faculty of Forestry and Environmental Management, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada, wmonk@unb.ca;
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Natalie Rideout
(), Canadian Rivers Institute, Department of Biology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada, nrideout@unb.ca;
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Sonja Stefani
(), Dresden University of Technology, Institute of Hydrobiology, Dresden, Saxony, Germany, stefani.sonja@googlemail.com;
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Mehrdad Hajibabaei
(), Centre for Biodiversity Genomics & Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, ON, Canada, mhajibab@uoguelph.ca;
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Terrisita Porter
(), Centre for Biodiversity Genomics @ Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, terrimporter@gmail.com;
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Donald Baird
(), Environment and Climate Change Canada @ Canadian Rivers Institute, Department of Biology, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada, djbaird@unb.ca;
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