Consumer-mediated movement can couple food webs in distinct habitats and facilitate energy flow between them. In New England saltmarshes, mummichog (Fundulus heteroclitus) use the flooding spring tides to access the high marsh platform and eat invertebrate prey, coupling the high marsh and aquatic creek food webs by gathering energy produced on the high marsh and making it available to the aquatic food web. Changes in the geomorphology of saltmarsh creek edges greatly influence the survival, biomass, and resource use of mummichog populations. Here, we use gut content analysis and field surveys to quantify the effect of altered creek edge geomorphology of mummichog predation on terrestrial invertebrate prey found on the high marsh surface. Fish populations in creeks with greater connectivity had a higher total biomass of terrestrial invertebrates in their guts. However, bomb calorimetry showed no difference in the average caloric content of mummichog individuals from creeks with different creek edge geomorphology. Additionally, we did not observe differences between the biomass and length distributions of mummichog in those creeks. While altered creek edge geomorphology has no effect the condition of the individual mummichog, it does decrease the total number of mummichog supported by a marsh creek and therefore decreases the total amount of high marsh production fluxed by mummichog to the aquatic habitat, decreasing coupling between the terrestrial and aquatic food webs.

消费者介导的运动可以使食物网在不同的生境中耦合并促进它们之间的能量流动。在新英格兰盐沼，mummichog（Fundulus heteroclitus）使用洪水潮汐进入高沼地平台并吃掉无脊椎动物的猎物，通过收集高沼地上产生的能量并将高沼地和水生小河食物网耦合起来，并将其提供给水生食物网。盐沼小溪边缘的地貌变化极大地影响了木乃伊克种群的生存，生物量和资源利用。在这里，我们使用肠道含量分析和野外调查来量化木乃伊捕食者改变的小溪边缘地貌对高沼泽地表发现的陆地无脊椎动物猎物的影响。连通性更高的小河中的鱼类种群的肠道中无脊椎动物的总生物量更高。但是，炸弹量热法显示，来自不同小溪边缘地貌的小溪的穆米奇克人的平均热量含量没有差异。此外，在这些小溪中，我们没有观察到木乃菌的生物量和长度分布之间的差异。尽管改变的小溪边缘地貌没有影响单个木乃伊的条件，但确实减少了沼泽小溪所支撑的木乃伊的总数，因此减少了由木乃伊向水生生境转移的高沼泽产量的总量，从而减少了沼泽之间的耦合。陆地和水生食物网。