3 research outputs found
Rainforest transformation reallocates energy from green to brown food webs.
Terrestrial animal biodiversity is increasingly being lost because of land-use change1,2. However, functional and energetic consequences aboveground and belowground and across trophic levels in megadiverse tropical ecosystems remain largely unknown. To fill this gap, we assessed changes in energy fluxes across 'green' aboveground (canopy arthropods and birds) and 'brown' belowground (soil arthropods and earthworms) animal food webs in tropical rainforests and plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. Our results showed that most of the energy in rainforests is channelled to the belowground animal food web. Oil palm and rubber plantations had similar or, in the case of rubber agroforest, higher total animal energy fluxes compared to rainforest but the key energetic nodes were distinctly different: in rainforest more than 90% of the total animal energy flux was channelled by arthropods in soil and canopy, whereas in plantations more than 50% of the energy was allocated to annelids (earthworms). Land-use change led to a consistent decline in multitrophic energy flux aboveground, whereas belowground food webs responded with reduced energy flux to higher trophic levels, down to -90%, and with shifts from slow (fungal) to fast (bacterial) energy channels and from faeces production towards consumption of soil organic matter. This coincides with previously reported soil carbon stock depletion3. Here we show that well-documented animal biodiversity declines with tropical land-use change4-6 are associated with vast energetic and functional restructuring in food webs across aboveground and belowground ecosystem compartments
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Rainforest transformation reallocates energy from green to brown food webs
Acknowledgements: This study was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), project number 192626868–SFB 990 in the framework of the collaborative German-Indonesian research project CRC990. We thank PT REKI for granting us access and use of their properties. A.M.P. acknowledges support of the DFG Emmy Noether programme (project no. 493345801) and of iDiv (DFG–FZT 118, 202548816). C.W. is grateful for support by the DFG Heisenberg programme (project no. 493487387). We thank B. Gauzens for advice on energy flux calculations and discussion about the index for carbon balance. We thank S. Meyer and contributors of PhyloPic.org for the animal and resource silhouettes used in Figs. 1 and 2.AbstractTerrestrial animal biodiversity is increasingly being lost because of land-use change1,2. However, functional and energetic consequences aboveground and belowground and across trophic levels in megadiverse tropical ecosystems remain largely unknown. To fill this gap, we assessed changes in energy fluxes across ‘green’ aboveground (canopy arthropods and birds) and ‘brown’ belowground (soil arthropods and earthworms) animal food webs in tropical rainforests and plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. Our results showed that most of the energy in rainforests is channelled to the belowground animal food web. Oil palm and rubber plantations had similar or, in the case of rubber agroforest, higher total animal energy fluxes compared to rainforest but the key energetic nodes were distinctly different: in rainforest more than 90% of the total animal energy flux was channelled by arthropods in soil and canopy, whereas in plantations more than 50% of the energy was allocated to annelids (earthworms). Land-use change led to a consistent decline in multitrophic energy flux aboveground, whereas belowground food webs responded with reduced energy flux to higher trophic levels, down to −90%, and with shifts from slow (fungal) to fast (bacterial) energy channels and from faeces production towards consumption of soil organic matter. This coincides with previously reported soil carbon stock depletion3. Here we show that well-documented animal biodiversity declines with tropical land-use change4–6 are associated with vast energetic and functional restructuring in food webs across aboveground and belowground ecosystem compartments.</jats:p
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Rainforest transformation reallocates energy from green to brown food webs
Acknowledgements: This study was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), project number 192626868–SFB 990 in the framework of the collaborative German-Indonesian research project CRC990. We thank PT REKI for granting us access and use of their properties. A.M.P. acknowledges support of the DFG Emmy Noether programme (project no. 493345801) and of iDiv (DFG–FZT 118, 202548816). C.W. is grateful for support by the DFG Heisenberg programme (project no. 493487387). We thank B. Gauzens for advice on energy flux calculations and discussion about the index for carbon balance. We thank S. Meyer and contributors of PhyloPic.org for the animal and resource silhouettes used in Figs. 1 and 2.Terrestrial animal biodiversity is increasingly being lost because of land-use change1, 2. However, functional and energetic consequences aboveground and belowground and across trophic levels in megadiverse tropical ecosystems remain largely unknown. To fill this gap, we assessed changes in energy fluxes across ‘green’ aboveground (canopy arthropods and birds) and ‘brown’ belowground (soil arthropods and earthworms) animal food webs in tropical rainforests and plantations in Sumatra, Indonesia. Our results showed that most of the energy in rainforests is channelled to the belowground animal food web. Oil palm and rubber plantations had similar or, in the case of rubber agroforest, higher total animal energy fluxes compared to rainforest but the key energetic nodes were distinctly different: in rainforest more than 90% of the total animal energy flux was channelled by arthropods in soil and canopy, whereas in plantations more than 50% of the energy was allocated to annelids (earthworms). Land-use change led to a consistent decline in multitrophic energy flux aboveground, whereas belowground food webs responded with reduced energy flux to higher trophic levels, down to −90%, and with shifts from slow (fungal) to fast (bacterial) energy channels and from faeces production towards consumption of soil organic matter. This coincides with previously reported soil carbon stock depletion3. Here we show that well-documented animal biodiversity declines with tropical land-use change4–6 are associated with vast energetic and functional restructuring in food webs across aboveground and belowground ecosystem compartments