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Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Biodiversity and ecosystem function; detrital processing; resource consumption; trophic structure; trophic transfer
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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Diversity Has Stronger Top-Down Than Bottom-Up Effects On Decomposition, Ds Srivastava, Bj Cardinale, Al Downing, Je Duffy, Et Al
Diversity Has Stronger Top-Down Than Bottom-Up Effects On Decomposition, Ds Srivastava, Bj Cardinale, Al Downing, Je Duffy, Et Al
VIMS Articles
The flow of energy and nutrients between trophic levels is affected by both the trophic structure of food webs and the diversity of species within trophic levels. However, the combined effects of trophic structure and diversity on trophic transfer remain largely unknown. Here we ask whether changes in consumer diversity have the same effect as changes in resource diversity on rates of resource consumption. We address this question by focusing on consumer-resource dynamics for the ecologically important process of decomposition. This study compares the top-down effect of consumer (detritivore) diversity on the consumption of dead organic matter (decomposition) with the …