Trophic lengthening triggered by filamentous, N₂-fixing cyanobacteria disrupts pelagic but not benthic food webs in a large estuarine ecosystem.

ABSTRACT: Eutrophication, increased temperatures and stratification can lead to massive, filamentous, N₂-fixing cyanobacterial (FNC) blooms in coastal ecosystems with largely unresolved consequences for the mass and energy supply in food webs. Mesozooplankton adapt to not top-down controlled FNC blooms by switching diets from phytoplankton to microzooplankton, resulting in a directly quantifiable increase in its trophic position (TP) from 2.0 to as high as 3.0. If this process in mesozooplankton, we call trophic lengthening, was transferred to higher trophic levels of a food web, a loss of energy could result in massive declines of fish biomass. We used compound-specific nitrogen stable isotope data of amino acids (CSIA) to estimate and compare the nitrogen (N) sources and TPs of cod and

SUBMITTER: Steinkopf M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10877452 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature