Do predators have a role to play in wetland ecosystem functioning? An experimental study in New England salt marshes,Ecology and Evolution

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Do predators have a role to play in wetland ecosystem functioning? An experimental study in New England salt marshes
Ecology and Evolution ( IF 2.3 ) Pub Date : 2021-07-21 , DOI: 10.1002/ece3.7880
Alexandria C Moore ₁ , Oswald J Schmitz ₁

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The historical ecological paradigm of wetland ecosystems emphasized the role of physical or “bottom-up” factors in maintaining functions and services. However, recent studies have shown that the loss of predators in coastal salt marshes can lead to a significant reduction in wetland extent due to overgrazing of vegetation by herbivores. Such studies indicate that consumers or “top-down” factors may play a much larger role in the maintenance of wetland ecosystems than was previously thought. The objective of this study was to evaluate whether altering top-down control by manipulating the presence of predators can lead to measurable changes in salt marsh ecosystem properties. Between May and August of 2015 and 2016, we established exclosure and enclosure cages within three New England coastal wetland areas and manipulated the presence of green crab predators to assess how they and their fiddler and purple marsh crab prey affect changes in ecosystem properties. Predator presence was associated with changes in soil nitrogen and aboveground biomass at two of the three field sites, though the magnitude and direction of these effects varied from site to site. Further, path analysis results indicate that across field sites, a combination of bottom-up and top-down factors influenced changes in measured variables. These results challenge the growing consensus that consumers have strong effects, indicating instead that predator impacts may be highly context-dependent.

中文翻译：

捕食者在湿地生态系统功能中发挥作用吗？新英格兰盐沼的实验研究

湿地生态系统的历史生态范式强调物理或“自下而上”因素在维持功能和服务中的作用。然而，最近的研究表明，由于食草动物过度放牧植被，沿海盐沼中捕食者的丧失可能导致湿地面积显着减少。此类研究表明，消费者或“自上而下”的因素在湿地生态系统的维护中发挥的作用可能比之前想象的要大得多。本研究的目的是评估通过操纵捕食者的存在来改变自上而下的控制是否可以导致盐沼生态系统特性发生可测量的变化。 2015 年 5 月至 8 月和 2016 年之间，我们在新英格兰沿海湿地的三个区域建立了围栏和围栏笼，并操纵绿蟹捕食者的存在，以评估它们及其招潮蟹和紫色沼泽蟹猎物如何影响生态系统特性的变化。捕食者的存在与三个野外地点中两个的土壤氮和地上生物量的变化有关，尽管这些影响的程度和方向因地点而异。此外，路径分析结果表明，在各个现场，自下而上和自上而下因素的组合影响了测量变量的变化。这些结果挑战了消费者具有强烈影响这一日益增长的共识，表明捕食者的影响可能高度依赖于环境。

更新日期：2021-08-16

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