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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Predator Water Balance Alters Intraguild Predation In A Streamsidefood Web, Israel L. Leinbach, Kevin E. Mccluney, John L. Sabo
Predator Water Balance Alters Intraguild Predation In A Streamsidefood Web, Israel L. Leinbach, Kevin E. Mccluney, John L. Sabo
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications
Previous work suggests that animal water balance can influence trophic interactions, with predators increasing their consumption of water-laden prey to meet water demands.But it is unclear how the need for water interacts with the need for energy to drive trophic interactions under shifting conditions. Using manipulative field experiments, we show that water balance influences the effects of top predators on prey with contrasting ratios of water and energy, altering the frequency of intraguild predation. Water-stressed top predators (large spiders) negatively affect water-laden basal prey (crickets), especially male prey with higher water content, whereas alleviation of water limitation causes top predators …
Urbanization Alters Communities Of Flying Arthropods In Parks And Gardens Of A Medium-Sized City, Edward Lagucki, Justin D. Burdine, Kevin E. Mccluney
Urbanization Alters Communities Of Flying Arthropods In Parks And Gardens Of A Medium-Sized City, Edward Lagucki, Justin D. Burdine, Kevin E. Mccluney
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications
Urbanization transforms undeveloped landscapes into built environments, causing changes in communities and ecological processes. Flying arthropods play important roles in these processes as pollinators, decomposers, and predators, and can be important in structuring food webs. The goal of this study was to identify associations between urbanization and the composition of communities of flying (and floating) arthropods within gardens and parks in a medium-sized mesic city. We predicted that flying arthropod abundance and diversity would respond strongly to percent impervious surface and distance to city center, measurements of urbanization. Flying arthropods were sampled from 30 gardens and parks along an urbanization …
Variation In Arthropod Hydration Across Us Cities With Distinct Climate, Kevin E. Mccluney, Justin D. Burdine, Steven D. Frank
Variation In Arthropod Hydration Across Us Cities With Distinct Climate, Kevin E. Mccluney, Justin D. Burdine, Steven D. Frank
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications
Increasing evidence suggests that altered environmental conditions within cities (e.g. temperature) can have strong effects on the biology and ecology of animals. Moreover, multiple abiotic (e.g. soil moisture, distributions of water bodies) and biotic factors (e.g. plant and animal communities) may be more similar among cities in distinct climate regions as compared to outside cities. But the mechanisms behind these patterns are unclear. We suggest that animal physiological condition responds to urbanization and may become more similar with urbanization among cities. As a first attempt at assessing this possibility, we measured hydration (water content) of field-collected arthropods, across variation in …
Sensitivity And Tolerance Of Riparian Arthropod Communities To Altered Water Resources Along A Drying River, Kevin E. Mccluney, John L. Sabo
Sensitivity And Tolerance Of Riparian Arthropod Communities To Altered Water Resources Along A Drying River, Kevin E. Mccluney, John L. Sabo
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications
Rivers around the world are drying with increasing frequency, but little is known about effects on terrestrial animal communities. Previous research along the San Pedro River in southeastern AZ, USA, suggests that changes in the availability of water resources associated with river drying lead to changes in predator abundance, community composition, diversity, and abundance of particular taxa of arthropods, but these observations have not yet been tested manipulatively.
Water As A Trophic Currency In Dryland Food Webs, Daniel C. Allen, Kevin E. Mccluney, Stephen R. Elser, John L. Sabo
Water As A Trophic Currency In Dryland Food Webs, Daniel C. Allen, Kevin E. Mccluney, Stephen R. Elser, John L. Sabo
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications
Water is essential for life on Earth, yet little is known about how water acts as a trophic currency, a unit of value in determining species interactions in terrestrial food webs. We tested the relative importance of groundwater and surface water in riparian food webs by manipulating their availability in dryland floodplains. Primary consumers (crickets) increased in abundance in response to added surface water and groundwater (contained in moist leaves), and predators (spiders and lizards) increased in abundance in response to added surface water, in spite of the presence of a river, an abundant water source. Moreover, the relative magnitude …
Tracing Water Sources Of Terrestrial Animal Populations With Stable Isotopes: Laboratory Tests With Crickets And Spiders, Kevin E. Mccluney, John L. Sabo
Tracing Water Sources Of Terrestrial Animal Populations With Stable Isotopes: Laboratory Tests With Crickets And Spiders, Kevin E. Mccluney, John L. Sabo
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications
Fluxes of carbon, nitrogen, and water between ecosystem components and organisms have great impacts across levels of biological organization. Although much progress has been made in tracing carbon and nitrogen, difficulty remains in tracing water sources from the ecosystem to animals and among animals (the ‘‘water web’’). Naturally occurring, nonradioactive isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in water provide a potential method for tracing water sources. However, using this approach for terrestrial animals is complicated by a change in water isotopes within the body due to differences in activity of heavy and light isotopes during cuticular and transpiratory water losses. Here …
Water Availability Directly Determines Per Capita Consumption At Two Trophic Levels, Kevin E. Mccluney, John L. Sabo
Water Availability Directly Determines Per Capita Consumption At Two Trophic Levels, Kevin E. Mccluney, John L. Sabo
Biological Sciences Faculty Publications
Community ecology has long focused on energy and nutrients as currencies of species interactions. Evidence from physiological ecology and recent studies suggest that in terrestrial systems, water may influence animal behavior and global patterns of species richness. Despite these observations, water has received little attention as a currency directly influencing animal species interactions. Here, we show that the per capita interaction strength between predatory wolf spiders and their primary prey, field crickets, is strong (0.266) when predators and prey are maintained in ambient dry conditions, but is near zero (0.001) when water is provided ad libitum. Moreover, crickets consume 31-fold …