Body mass constraints on feeding rates determine the consequences of predator loss

Abstract

Understanding effects of species loss in complex food webs with multiple trophic levels is complicated by the idiosyncrasy of the predator effects on lower trophic levels: direct and indirect effects intermingle and may increase, decrease or not affect ecosystem functioning. We introduce a reductionist approach explaining a predator’s trophic effect only by empirically well-founded body-mass constraints on abundance, diet breadth and feeding strength. We demonstrate that this mechanistic concept successfully explains the positive, negative and neutral net effects of predators on decomposers in a litter microcosm experiment. This approach offers a new perspective on the interplay of complex interactions within food webs and is easily extendable to include phylogenetic and other body-mass independent traits. We anticipate that allometry will substantially improve our understanding of idiosyncratic predator effects in experiments and the consequences of predator loss in natural ecosystems.

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