A food web including parasites for kelp forests of the Santa Barbara Channel, California

Morton, Dana N.; Antonino, Cristiana Y.; Broughton, Farallon J.; Dykman, Lauren N.; Kuris, Armand M.; Lafferty, Kevin D.

doi:10.1038/s41597-021-00880-4

Cited by 15 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Exclusion of this link type would make parasites appear extremely specialized, further reducing food web connectance. Parasites using paratenic hosts had ample opportunities for hosts in the kelp forest and were among the most abundant parasites in dissections (Morton et al, 2021a). However, these extreme generalists were outnumbered by non‐trophically transmitted specialists in terms of species richness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Data sets (Morton et al, 2021a) are available in Dryad: https://doi.org/10.25349/D9JG70. Code (Morton, 2021) is available in Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5601686.…”

Section: Data Availability Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kelp forests contain more top predators and certain taxa (e.g., marine mammals, sharks) that are uncommon in salt marshes, lakes, or mudflats. Moreover, the kelp‐forest food web (Morton et al, 2021b ) is more species rich than other currently published food webs that include parasites (Dunne et al, 2013 ; McLaughlin et al, 2020 ) and therefore presents new opportunities to understand the role parasites play in food webs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parasites in kelp‐forest food webs increase food‐chain length, complexity, and specialization, but reduce connectance

Morton

Lafferty

2022

Ecological Monographs

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We explored whether parasites are important in kelp forests by examining their effects on a high-quality, high-resolution kelp-forest food web. After controlling for generic effects of network size, parasites affected kelp-forest food web structure in some ways consistent with other systems. Parasites increased the trophic span of the web, increasing top predator vulnerability and the longest chain length. Unique links associated with parasites, such as concomitant predation (consumption of parasites along with their hosts by predators) increased the frequency of network motifs involving mutual consumption and decreased niche contiguity of free-living species. However, parasites also affected kelp-forest food web structure in ways not seen in other systems.Kelp-forest parasites are richer and more specialized than other systems. As a result, parasites reduced diet generality and decreased connectance in the kelp forest. Although mutual consumption motifs increased in frequency, this motif type was still a small fraction of all possible motifs, so their increase in frequency was not enough to compensate for the decrease in connectance caused by adding many specialist parasite species.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Data sets (Morton et al, 2021a) are available in Dryad: https://doi.org/10.25349/D9JG70. Code (Morton, 2021) is available in Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5601686.…”

Section: Data Availability Statementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Parasites in kelp‐forest food webs increase food‐chain length, complexity, and specialization, but reduce connectance

Morton

Lafferty

2022

Ecological Monographs

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“…As consumers, potential disease vectors, and prey, parasites and micropredators are an important component of ecological food webs in aquatic systems (e.g., Thieltges et al, 2013 ; Orlofske et al, 2015 ; Wood and Johnson, 2015 ), including kelp forests ( Morton et al, 2021 ). Because of their unusual life cycle, gnathiids are typically overlooked by marine ecologists, including parasite ecologists.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although our knowledge of gnathiid ecology comes mostly from studies in tropical coral reefs, the majority of temperate studies have been conducted in rocky intertidal ( Smit et al, 2003 ; Welicky et al, 2018 ) and estuarine habitats ( Hayashi et al, 2020 ). Our study here is one of the few ecological studies of temperate gnathiids in sub-tidal kelp forests ( Hobson and Chess, 1976 ; Hammer, 1981 ; Stepien and Brusca, 1985 ; Morton et al, 2021 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Habitat associations and impacts on a juvenile fish host by a temperate gnathiid isopod

Spitzer

Anderson

Sikkel

2022

International Journal for Parasitology: Parasites and Wildlife

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The distribution and abundance of organisms is typically shaped by multiple biotic and abiotic processes. Micropredators are parasite-like organisms that are smaller than their hosts and/or prey and feed on multiple hosts during a given life stage. Unlike typical parasites, however, they spend much or most of their time free-living, associating only temporarily with hosts. In the ocean, micropredators can impact multiple fish species, and in particular can have significant lethal and sub-lethal effects on newly settled fish. Although gnathiid isopods are abundant and primary micropredators in coral reef ecosystems, their impacts are relatively unexplored within sub-tidal temperate rocky reefs. We investigated the distribution of juvenile gnathiid isopods along sub-tidal temperate rocky reefs and tested trap methodology. We also quantified both the sub-lethal and lethal impacts of feeding-stage juvenile gnathiid isopods on juvenile, post-settlement reef fish, Heterostichus rostratus (giant kelpfish). We were most interested in determining the relationship between gnathiid infestation level and fish swimming performance, in particular swimming metrics relevant to predator avoidance maneuvers. We found that Gnathia tridens was present in rocky reefs rather than embayments along the Southern California coastline and that within rocky reefs, gnathiids occurred in the highest densities in lighted traps. Surprisingly, we observed almost no influence of fish size or gnathiid sub-lethal infestation level on ambient or burst swimming performance metrics. However, burst duration was reduced by gnathiid infestation, which is important in predator avoidance. There were significant differences in survivorship among small fish compared to large fish as a result of gnathiid infestation. Larger fish survived higher numbers of gnathiids than smaller fish, indicating that parasite-induced mortality is greater for smaller fish. Investigations of the effects of micropredators on subsequent predator-mediated mortality, including the susceptibility of fishes and their individual responses to micropredators, can further contribute to our understanding of processes affecting recruitment in resident reef fish populations. Further research, especially within temperate sub-tidal ecosystems, is needed to understand and highlight the overlooked importance of micropredation in shaping fish populations within a reefscape.

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Critical role of parasite‐mediated energy pathway on community response to nutrient enrichment

Thongthaisong

Kasada

Grossart

et al. 2022

Ecology and Evolution

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Parasites form an integral part of food webs, however, they are often ignored in classic food web theory or limited to the investigation of trophic transmission pathways. Specifically, direct consumption of parasites by nonhost predators is rarely considered, while it can contribute substantially to energy flow in food webs. In aquatic systems, chytrids constitute a major group of fungal parasites whose free‐living infective stages (zoospores) form a highly nutritional food source to zooplankton. Thereby, the consumption of zoospores can create an energy pathway from otherwise inedible phytoplankton to zooplankton (“mycoloop”). This parasite‐mediated energy pathway might be of special importance during phytoplankton blooms dominated by inedible or toxic primary producers like cyanobacteria, which are on the rise with eutrophication and global warming. We theoretically investigated community dynamics and energy transfer in a food web consisting of an edible nonhost and an inedible host phytoplankton species, a parasitic fungus, and a zooplankton species grazing on edible phytoplankton and fungi. Food web dynamics were investigated along a nutrient gradient contrasting nonadaptive zooplankton species representative for filter feeders like cladocerans and zooplankton with the ability to actively adapt their feeding preferences like many copepod species. Overall, the importance of the mycoloop for zooplankton increases with nutrient availability. This increase is smooth for nonadaptive consumers. For adaptive consumers, we observe an abrupt shift from an almost exclusive preference for edible phytoplankton at low nutrient levels to a strong preference for parasitic fungi at high nutrient levels. The model predicts that parasitic fungi could contribute up to 50% of the zooplankton diet in nutrient‐rich environments, which agrees with empirical observations on zooplankton gut content from eutrophic systems during blooms of inedible diatoms or cyanobacteria. Our findings highlight the role of parasite‐mediated energy pathways for predictions of energy flow and community composition under current and future environmental change.

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A food web including parasites for kelp forests of the Santa Barbara Channel, California

Cited by 15 publications

References 46 publications

Parasites in kelp‐forest food webs increase food‐chain length, complexity, and specialization, but reduce connectance

Parasites in kelp‐forest food webs increase food‐chain length, complexity, and specialization, but reduce connectance

Habitat associations and impacts on a juvenile fish host by a temperate gnathiid isopod

Critical role of parasite‐mediated energy pathway on community response to nutrient enrichment

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