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Global patterns in the impact of marine herbivores on benthic primary producers

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-17, 15:41 authored by Poore, AGB, Campbell, AH, Coleman, RA, Graham EdgarGraham Edgar, Jormalainen, V, Reynolds, PL, Sotka, EE, Stachowicz, JJ, Taylor, RB, Vanderklift, MA, Duffy, JE
Despite the importance of consumers in structuring communities, and the widespread assumption that consumption is strongest at low latitudes, empirical tests for global scale patterns in the magnitude of consumer impacts are limited. In marine systems, the long tradition of experimentally excluding herbivores in their natural environments allows consumer impacts to be quantified on global scales using consistent methodology. We present a quantitative synthesis of 613 marine herbivore exclusion experiments to test the influence of consumer traits, producer traits and the environment on the strength of herbivore impacts on benthic producers. Across the globe, marine herbivores profoundly reduced producer abundance (by 68% on average), with strongest effects in rocky intertidal habitats and the weakest effects on habitats dominated by vascular plants. Unexpectedly, we found little or no influence of latitude or mean annual water temperature. Instead, herbivore impacts differed most consistently among producer taxonomic and morphological groups. Our results show that grazing impacts on plant abundance are better predicted by producer traits than by large-scale variation in habitat or mean temperature, and that there is a previously unrecognised degree of phylogenetic conservatism in producer susceptibility to consumption.

History

Publication title

Ecology Letters

Volume

15

Issue

8

Pagination

912-922

ISSN

1461-0248

Department/School

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

Publisher

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Place of publication

London

Rights statement

Copyright 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/CNRS

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Coastal or estuarine biodiversity