Complex responses to invasive grass litter by ground arthropods in a Mediterranean scrub ecosystem.

ABSTRACT: Plant invasions have tremendous potential to alter food webs by changing basal resources. Recent studies document how plant invasions may contribute to increased arthropod abundances in detritus-based food webs. An obvious mechanism for this phenomenon-a bottom-up effect resulting from elevated levels of detritus from the invasive plant litter-has not been explicitly studied. We examined the effects of an annual grass invasion on ground arthropod assemblages in the coastal sage scrub (CSS) of southern California. Bottom-up food web theory predicts that the addition of detritus would increase generalist-feeding arthropods at all trophic levels; accordingly, we expected increases in fungi, Collembola, and common predators such as mites and spiders. For the common ant taxa, habitat alteration

SUBMITTER: Wolkovich EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2744776 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature