Habitat coupling in lake ecosystems
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Date
2002-03-12
Authors
Schindler, Daniel E.
Scheuerell, Mark D.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
OIKOS
Abstract
Lakes are complex ecosystems composed of distinct habitats coupled by biological,
physical and chemical processes. While the ecological and evolutionary characteristics
of aquatic organisms reflect habitat coupling in lakes, aquatic ecology has largely
studied pelagic, benthic and riparian habitats in isolation from each other. Here, we
summarize several ecological and evolutionary patterns that highlight the importance
of habitat coupling and discuss their implications for understanding ecosystem
processes in lakes. We pay special attention to fishes because they play particularly
important roles as habitat couplers as a result of their high mobility and flexible
foraging tactics that lead to inter-habitat omnivory. Habitat coupling has important
consequences for nutrient cycling, predator-prey interactions, and food web structure
and stability. For example, nutrient excretion by benthivorous consumers can account for a substantial fraction of inputs to pelagic nutrient cycles. Benthic resources
also subsidize carnivore populations that have important predatory effects on plankton communities. These benthic subsidies stabilize population dynamics of pelagic
carnivores and intensify the strength of their interactions with planktonic food webs.
Furthermore, anthropogenic disturbances such as eutrophication, habitat modification, and exotic species introductions may severely alter habitat connections and,
therefore, the fundamental flows of nutrients and energy in lake ecosystems.
Description
Keywords
habitat, ecosystems, lake, coupling, benthic, aquatic