Trophic model closure influences ecosystem response to enrichment

Omta, Anne Willem; Heiny, Elizabeth A.; Rajakaruna, Harshana; Talmy, David; Follows, Michael J.

doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2022.110183

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…By comparison to the models considered here, plankton communities are considerably more complex and diverse, regarding organism size (Hansen et al, 1994), metabolism (Alexander et al, 2015;Posfai et al, 2017), and resource affinities (Litchman et al, 2007). Similarly, when it comes to parameterizing microzooplankton losses, there are more complex assumptions to be made beyond our very crude contrast between linear (density-independent) and quadratic (density-dependent) mortality, again with implications for system properties (Omta et al, 2023;Rhodes and Martin, 2010). Despite these limitations, our modeling points to a simple set of principles that we anticipate will extend to more sophisticated representations of plankton ecology.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Killing the predator: impacts of highest-predator mortality on the global-ocean ecosystem structure

Talmy,

Carr,

Rajakaruna

et al. 2024

Biogeosciences

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Abstract. Recent meta-analyses suggest that microzooplankton biomass density scales linearly with phytoplankton biomass density, suggesting a simple, general rule may underpin trophic structure in the global ocean. Here, we use a set of highly simplified food web models, solved within a global general circulation model, to examine the core drivers of linear predator–prey scaling. We examine a parallel food chain model which assumes microzooplankton grazers feed on distinct size classes of phytoplankton and contrast this with a diamond food web model allowing shared microzooplankton predation on a range of phytoplankton size classes. Within these two contrasting model structures, we also evaluate the impact of fixed vs. density-dependent microzooplankton mortality. We find that the observed relationship between microzooplankton predators and prey can be reproduced with density-dependent mortality on the highest predator, regardless of choices made about plankton food web structure. Our findings point to the importance of parameterizing mortality of the highest predator for simple food web models to recapitulate trophic structure in the global ocean.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Killing the predator: impacts of highest-predator mortality on the global-ocean ecosystem structure

Talmy,

Carr,

Rajakaruna

et al. 2024

Biogeosciences

Self Cite

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show abstract

“…Our modeling could have been made considerably more complex to evaluate these more realistic influences on system structure. Similarly, when it comes to parameterizing microzooplankton losses, there are more complex assumptions to be made beyond our very crude contrast between linear (density-independent) and quadratic (density-dependent) mortality, again with implications for system properties (Rhodes and Martin 2010;Omta et al 2023).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Killing the predator: impacts of top predator mortality on global-ocean ecosystem structure

Talmy,

Carr,

Rajakaruna

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Abstract. Recent metanalyses suggest that microzooplankton biomass density scales linearly with phytoplankton biomass density, suggesting a simple, general rule may underpin trophic structure in the global ocean. Here, we use a set of highly simplified food-web models, solved within a global general circulation model, to examine the core drivers of linear predator-prey scaling. We examine a parallel food-chain model which assumes microzooplankton grazers feed on distinct size-classes of phytoplankton, and contrast this with a diamond food-web model allowing shared microzooplankton predation on a range of phytoplankton size classes. Within these two contrasting model structures, we also evaluate the impact of fixed vs. density-dependent microzooplankton mortality. We find that the observed relationship between microzooplankton predators and prey can be reproduced with density-dependent mortality on the top predator, regardless of choices made about plankton food-web structure. Our findings point to the importance of parameterizing mortality of the top predator for models to recapitulate trophic structure in the global ocean.

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Trophic model closure influences ecosystem response to enrichment

Cited by 2 publications

References 74 publications

Killing the predator: impacts of highest-predator mortality on the global-ocean ecosystem structure

Killing the predator: impacts of highest-predator mortality on the global-ocean ecosystem structure

Killing the predator: impacts of top predator mortality on global-ocean ecosystem structure

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