Life Sciences Commons^™

Greenfall Links Groundwater To Aboveground Food Webs In Desert River Floodplains, John L. Sabo, Kevin E. Mccluney, Yevgeniy Marusenko, Andrew Keller, Candan U. Soykan

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Groundwater makes up nearly 99% of unfrozen freshwater worldwide and sustains riparian trees rooted in shallow aquifers, especially in arid and semiarid climates. The goal of this paper is to root animals in the regional water cycle by quantifying the significance of groundwater to riparian animals. We focused our efforts on the cricket, Gryllus alogus: a common primary consumer found in floodplain forests along the San Pedro River, in southeast Arizona, USA. Cottonwood trees make groundwater available to G. alogus as dislodged, groundwater-laden leaves (greenfall). We hypothesized that groundwater fluxes mediated by greenfall sustain G. allogus through the prolonged dry …