Ecological stoichiometry seeks to understand the ecological consequences of elemental imbalances between consumers and their resources. Therein, the well-accepted growth rate hypothesis (GRH) states that organisms exhibiting rapid growth have higher phosphorus (P) demand – and thus lower C:P and N:P ratios – than slow growing ones, due to a higher allocation to P-rich rRNA. However, GRH has rarely been extended to other biological traits than growth, especially at the community level. In this study, we investigated whether macroinvertebrate stoichiometric traits (e.g. C:P and N:P ratios) can be linked to their development traits, and whether these stoichiometric traits are related to macroinvertebrate community assemblage under different nutrient conditions. We allocated more than 400 European taxa to different groups, defined using available information about three development-related traits: ‘life span', ‘voltinism' and ‘number of reproductive cycles per individual'. We sampled 18 invertebrate taxa in six streams exhibiting different levels of nutrient concentration and measured their stoichiometric traits. Further, we quantified invertebrate taxon abundances in these streams during an annual survey. Based on these data, we tested whether community composition regarding the developmental groups differs, depending on nutrient concentration. We found significant differences in the proportions of the developmental groups along a gradient of water N:P, in relation to their stoichiometric traits. Taxa with low C:P and N:P ratios were generally associated with faster development groups, and these taxa tended to occur at higher proportions in streams exhibiting low dissolved N:P ratios. In contrast, communities from P-poor, high dissolved N:P streams, were dominated by slowly developing taxa with high N:P ratios. Our results highlight that extending the GRH to species development rate might give some insights about the mechanisms by which nutrient concentrations in ecosystems influence consumers' community composition.

中文翻译：

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将增长率假设扩展到物种发展：化学计量特征是否有助于解释大型无脊椎动物群落的组成？

生态化学计量学旨在了解消费者与其资源之间元素失衡的生态后果。其中，广为接受的生长率假说 (GRH) 指出，与生长缓慢的生物相比，生长速度较快的生物对磷 (P) 的需求更高，因此 C:P 和 N:P 比率较低，因为对 P 的分配较高- 丰富的 rRNA。然而，GRH 很少扩展到除生长之外的其他生物学特性，尤其是在社区层面。在本研究中，我们调查了大型无脊椎动物的化学计量性状（例如C:P 和N:P 比率）是否与其发育性状相关，以及这些化学计量性状是否与不同营养条​​件下的大型无脊椎动物群落组合有关。我们将 400 多个欧洲分类群分配给不同的群体，使用关于三个与发育相关的特征的可用信息进行定义：“寿命”、“voltinism”和“每个人的生殖周期数”。我们在表现出不同营养浓度水平的 6 个溪流中对 18 个无脊椎动物类群进行了采样，并测量了它们的化学计量特征。此外，我们在年度调查期间量化了这些溪流中的无脊椎动物分类群丰度。基于这些数据，我们测试了有关发育群体的群落组成是否因营养浓度而异。我们发现沿着水 N:P 梯度的发育组的比例与其化学计量性状有显着差异。C:P 和 N:P 比率低的分类群通常与快速发展的群体相关，并且这些分类群往往以较高的比例出现在表现出低溶解 N:P 比率的溪流中。相比之下，来自贫磷、高溶解 N:P 流的群落主要由缓慢发展的高 N:P 分类群控制。我们的研究结果强调，将 GRH 扩展到物种发育率可能会提供一些关于生态系统中养分浓度影响消费者群落组成的机制的见解。