Responses of orb-weaving spider aggregations to spatiotemporal variation in lake-to-land subsidies at Lake Mývatn, Iceland

Sánchez-Ruíz, Jose A.; Phillips, Joseph S.; Ives, Anthony R.; Gratton, Claudio

doi:10.1007/s00300-017-2202-4

Cited by 12 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…By using linear mixed effects models with group-specific temporal autocorrelation, we were able to partition the influence of three interrelated variables (time, distance, and midge deposition) to quantify the effect of allochthonous resources on a tundra arthropod community. We found a positive overall response of predator and detritivore abundance to midge deposition, which is consistent with previous studies at Mývatn (Hoekman et al 2011, Dreyer et al 2012, Sanchez-Ruiz et al 2018 and in other systems (Ostfeld andKeesing 2000, Murphy et al 2012). Given the ubiquity of spatiotemporal associations between different drivers of ecological communities, our approach has potential utility across many subdisciplines of community ecology.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…We illustrate the utility of this method by analyzing the responses of terrestrial arthropods to spatiotemporal variation in allochthonous resources at Lake Mývatn, Iceland (Einarsson et al 2004). Mývatn has large populations of midges (Diptera: Chironomidae) that emerge from the lake as adults and subsequently subsidize the terrestrial plant (Gratton et al 2008, Krowiak et al 2017) and arthropod (Dreyer et al 2012, Sanchez-Ruiz et al 2018) communities. The midges have large interannual fluctuations in abundance and decline in deposition with distance from the lakeshore (Dreyer et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quantifying community responses to environmental variation from replicate time series

Phillips

Nell

Botsch

2021

Preprint

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Time-series data for ecological communities are increasingly available from long-term studies designed to track species responses to environmental change. However, classical multivariate methods for analyzing community composition have limited applicability for time series, as they do not account for temporal autocorrelation in community-member abundances. Furthermore, traditional approaches often obscure the connections between responses at the community level and those for individual taxa, limiting their capacity to infer mechanisms of community change. We show how linear mixed models that account for group-specific temporal autocorrelation and observation error can be used to infer both taxon- and community-level responses to environmental predictors from replicated time-series data. Variation in taxon-specific responses to predictors is modeled using random effects, which can be used to characterize variation in community composition. Moreover, the degree of autocorrelation is estimated separately for each taxon, since this is likely to vary due to differences in their underlying population dynamics. We illustrate the utility of the approach by analyzing the response of a predatory arthropod community to spatiotemporal variation in allochthonous resources in a subarctic landscape. Our results show how mixed models with temporal autocorrelation provide a unified approach to characterizing taxon- and community-level responses to environmental variation through time.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying community responses to environmental variation from replicate time series

Phillips

Nell

Botsch

2021

Preprint

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“…Mývatn is naturally eutrophic and sustains large populations of midges (Diptera: Chironomidae), which emerge as adults for several weeks each year and form mating swarms over the surrounding heathland landscape. When not swarming, the adult midges settle in the vegetation where they become an abundant food resource for predatory arthropods (Dreyer et al 2016, Sanchez‐Ruiz et al 2018). In addition, when the midges die uneaten, their carcasses enter the detrital food web and subsidize the soil biota (Hoekman et al 2011), ultimately leading to the remineralization of nitrogen (N) and other nutrients that affect plant productivity and community composition (Gratton et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transient top‐down and bottom‐up effects of resources pulsed to multiple trophic levels

McCary

Phillips

Ramiadantsoa

et al. 2020

Ecology

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Pulsed fluxes of organisms across ecosystem boundaries can exert top‐down and bottom‐up effects in recipient food webs, through both direct effects on the subsidized trophic levels and indirect effects on other components of the system. While previous theoretical and empirical studies demonstrate the influence of allochthonous subsidies on bottom‐up and top‐down processes, understanding how these forces act in conjunction is still limited, particularly when an allochthonous resource can simultaneously subsidize multiple trophic levels. Using the Lake Mývatn region in Iceland as an example system of allochthony and its potential effects on multiple trophic levels, we analyzed a mathematical model to evaluate how pulsed subsidies of aquatic insects affect the dynamics of a soil–plant–arthropod food web. We found that the relative balance of top‐down and bottom‐up effects on a given food web compartment was determined by trophic position, subsidy magnitude, and top predators’ ability to exploit the subsidy. For intermediate trophic levels (e.g., detritivores and herbivores), we found that the subsidy could either alleviate or intensify top‐down pressure from the predator. For some parameter combinations, alleviation and intensification occurred sequentially during and after the resource pulse. The total effect of the subsidy on detritivores and herbivores, including top‐down and bottom‐up processes, was determined by the rate at which predator consumption saturated with increasing size of the allochthonous subsidy, with greater saturation leading to increased bottom‐up effects. Our findings illustrate how resource pulses to multiple trophic levels can influence food web dynamics by changing the relative strength of bottom‐up and top‐down effects, with bottom‐up predominating top‐down effects in most scenarios in this subarctic system.

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“…One set of papers (Docherty et al 2018;Høye et al 2018;Bowden et al 2018;Convey et al 2018;Hein et al 2018;Turney et al 2018) is broadly focused on characterizing how the abundance and life-history traits of tundra arthropods vary in relation to spatial and temporal environmental variation. The second set (Barrio et al 2017;Koltz et al 2018a;Sanchez-Ruiz et al 2018;Urbanowicz et al 2017;Müllerová et al 2018) is focused on characterizing the ecological roles of tundra arthropods in food webs and ecosystems. We have organized the synopsis around these two broad themes.…”

Section: Network For Arthropods Of the Tundra (Neat)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One of the most renowned examples of such temporally fluctuations in animal populations are the intense swarms of non-biting midges at Lake Myvatn in Iceland (Ives et al 2008). Sanchez-Ruiz et al (2018) found that orb-weaving spiders aggregate and build high densities of webs during the abrupt and intense pulse of prey availability when Chironomids emerge from Lake Myvatn. As such, this is another indication that nutrient transfer from aquatic to terrestrial ecosystems can be substantial in tundra habitats (Gratton et al 2008).…”

Section: Biotic Interactions and Ecosystem Effectsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tundra arthropods provide key insights into ecological responses to environmental change

Høye

Culler

2018

Polar Biol

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Arthropods perform critically important functions in food webs and ecosystems and are highly sensitive to the effects of environmental change. Despite their importance, the knowledge gaps in arthropod ecology are substantial. This is particularly problematic in Earth's polar and alpine regions, where tundra ecosystems are responding rapidly to climate change. Species diversity is lower in these regions versus temperate and tropical regions, but (1) we lack baseline and long-term data about the distributions and abundances of arthropods and their relationships to abiotic variation and (2) the roles of arthropods in these ecosystems are far from fully described. In recognition of the need for increased tundra arthropod research activity, a group of international scientists formed the Network for Arthropods of the Tundra (NeAT). In the past 3 years, this academic network has brought together entomologists from research institutions around the world to revitalize and coordinate the study of tundra arthropods. This special issue on the ecology of tundra arthropods represents a tangible example of this increased momentum. The papers in the special issue highlight recent advances in understanding the relationships between arthropod communities and abiotic variation in tundra ecosystems and clarify the roles that arthropods play in ecosystems. They collectively demonstrate the utility of tundra arthropods as a model system for testing general ecological theory about how species respond to environmental variation. We hope this special issue with the insights it provides and the new frontiers it outlines, together with NeAT, will leverage further momentum to the interest in, and study of the ecology of tundra arthropods in the years to come.

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Responses of orb-weaving spider aggregations to spatiotemporal variation in lake-to-land subsidies at Lake Mývatn, Iceland

Cited by 12 publications

References 33 publications

Quantifying community responses to environmental variation from replicate time series

Quantifying community responses to environmental variation from replicate time series

Transient top‐down and bottom‐up effects of resources pulsed to multiple trophic levels

Tundra arthropods provide key insights into ecological responses to environmental change

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