Strong nutrient-plant interactions enhance the stability of ecosystems.

ABSTRACT: Modular food web theory shows how weak energetic fluxes resulting from consumptive interactions plays a major role in stabilizing food webs in space and time. Despite the reliance on energetic fluxes, food web theory surprisingly remains poorly understood within an ecosystem context that naturally focuses on material fluxes. At the same time, while ecosystem theory has employed modular nutrient-limited ecosystem models to understand how limiting nutrients alter the structure and dynamics of food webs, ecosystem theory has overlooked the role of key ecosystem interactions and their strengths (e.g., plant-nutrient; R-N) in mediating the stability of nutrient-limited ecosystems. Here, towards integrating food web theory and ecosystem theory, we first briefly review consumer-resource interacti

SUBMITTER: Schonberger ZG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8528884 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature