Biology Commons^™

Indirect Effects Of Food Web Diversity And Productivity On Bacterial Community Function And Composition, Jennifer Krumins, Z. T. Long, C. F. Steiner, P. J. Morin

Department of Biology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

1. Previous evidence suggests that bacterially mediated decomposition of complex organic substrates increases with greater food web diversity. We attempted to identify changes in bacterial community composition and function associated with increased decomposition in more diverse food webs. 2. We used aquatic microcosms where we manipulated productivity with different initial nutrient concentrations. We created a diversity gradient by establishing communities of eukaryotes with zero (bacteria alone), one, two or four microbe species (protists and rotifers) in each of four trophic levels: producers, herbivores, bacterivores and predators. The initial bacterial community was standardized across all treatments. To determine effects of productivity …