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Community size structure varies with predator-prey size relationships and temperature across Australian reefs
Citation
Coghlan, AR and Blanchard, JL and Heather, FJ and Stuart-Smith, RD and Edgar, GJ and Audzijonyte, A, Community size structure varies with predator-prey size relationships and temperature across Australian reefs, Ecology and Evolution, 12, (4) Article e8789. ISSN 2045-7758 (2022) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright Statement
© 2021. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Climate change and fisheries exploitation are dramatically changing the abundances,
species composition, and size spectra of fish communities. We explore whether variation
in ‘abundance size spectra’, a widely studied ecosystem feature, is influenced by
a parameter theorized to govern the shape of size-structured
ecosystems—the
relationship
between the sizes of predators and their prey (predator–prey
mass ratios, or
PPMRs). PPMR estimates are lacking for a vast number of fish species, including at the
scale of trophic guilds. Using measurements of 8128 prey items in gut contents of 97
reef fish species, we established predator–prey
mass ratios (PPMRs) for four major
trophic guilds (piscivores, invertivores, planktivores, and herbivores) using linear
mixed effects models. To assess the theoretical predictions that higher community-level
PPMRs leads to shallower size spectrum slopes, we compared observations of
both ecosystem metrics for ~15,000 coastal reef sites distributed around Australia.
PPMRs of individual fishes were remarkably high (median ~71,000), with significant
variation between different trophic guilds (~890 for piscivores; ~83,000 for planktivores),
and ~8700 for whole communities. Community-level
PPMRs were positively
related to size spectrum slopes, broadly consistent with theory, however, this pattern
was also influenced by the latitudinal temperature gradient. Tropical reefs showed a
stronger relationship between community-level
PPMRs and community size spectrum
slopes than temperate reefs. The extent that these patterns apply outside Australia
and consequences for community structure and dynamics are key areas for future
investigation.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | coastal ecosystems, community composition, habitat complexity, predation, predator-prey mass ratio, size spectrum |
| Research Division: | Biological Sciences |
| Research Group: | Ecology |
| Research Field: | Population ecology |
| Objective Division: | Environmental Management |
| Objective Group: | Coastal and estuarine systems and management |
| Objective Field: | Coastal and estuarine systems and management not elsewhere classified |
| UTAS Author: | Coghlan, AR (Dr Amy Coghlan) |
| UTAS Author: | Blanchard, JL (Professor Julia Blanchard) |
| UTAS Author: | Heather, FJ (Dr Freddie Heather) |
| UTAS Author: | Stuart-Smith, RD (Dr Rick Stuart-Smith) |
| UTAS Author: | Edgar, GJ (Professor Graham Edgar) |
| UTAS Author: | Audzijonyte, A (Dr Asta Audzijonyte) |
| ID Code: | 150800 |
| Year Published: | 2022 |
| Deposited By: | Ecology and Biodiversity |
| Deposited On: | 2022-06-30 |
| Last Modified: | 2022-11-03 |
| Downloads: | 6 View Download Statistics |
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