TY - GEN A1 - Raatz, Michael A1 - van Velzen, Ellen A1 - Gaedke, Ursula T1 - Co‐adaptation impacts the robustness of predator–prey dynamics against perturbations T2 - Postprints der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe N2 - Global change threatens the maintenance of ecosystem functions that are shaped by the persistence and dynamics of populations. It has been shown that the persistence of species increases if they possess larger trait adaptability. Here, we investigate whether trait adaptability also affects the robustness of population dynamics of interacting species and thereby shapes the reliability of ecosystem functions that are driven by these dynamics. We model co‐adaptation in a predator–prey system as changes to predator offense and prey defense due to evolution or phenotypic plasticity. We investigate how trait adaptation affects the robustness of population dynamics against press perturbations to environmental parameters and against pulse perturbations targeting species abundances and their trait values. Robustness of population dynamics is characterized by resilience, elasticity, and resistance. In addition to employing established measures for resilience and elasticity against pulse perturbations (extinction probability and return time), we propose the warping distance as a new measure for resistance against press perturbations, which compares the shapes and amplitudes of pre‐ and post‐perturbation population dynamics. As expected, we find that the robustness of population dynamics depends on the speed of adaptation, but in nontrivial ways. Elasticity increases with speed of adaptation as the system returns more rapidly to the pre‐perturbation state. Resilience, in turn, is enhanced by intermediate speeds of adaptation, as here trait adaptation dampens biomass oscillations. The resistance of population dynamics strongly depends on the target of the press perturbation, preventing a simple relationship with the adaptation speed. In general, we find that low robustness often coincides with high amplitudes of population dynamics. Hence, amplitudes may indicate the robustness against perturbations also in other natural systems with similar dynamics. Our findings show that besides counteracting extinctions, trait adaptation indeed strongly affects the robustness of population dynamics against press and pulse perturbations. T3 - Zweitveröffentlichungen der Universität Potsdam : Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Reihe - 809 KW - disturbance KW - evolutionary rescue KW - population dynamics KW - stability KW - trait adaptation Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-442489 SN - 1866-8372 IS - 809 ER - TY - THES A1 - Raatz, Michael T1 - Strategies within predator-prey interactions – from individuals to ecosystems T1 - Strategien in Räuber-Beute Interaktionen – vom Individuum bis zum Ökosystem N2 - Predator-prey interactions provide central links in food webs. These interaction are directly or indirectly impacted by a number of factors. These factors range from physiological characteristics of individual organisms, over specifics of their interaction to impacts of the environment. They may generate the potential for the application of different strategies by predators and prey. Within this thesis, I modelled predator-prey interactions and investigated a broad range of different factors driving the application of certain strategies, that affect the individuals or their populations. In doing so, I focused on phytoplankton-zooplankton systems as established model systems of predator-prey interactions. At the level of predator physiology I proposed, and partly confirmed, adaptations to fluctuating availability of co-limiting nutrients as beneficial strategies. These may allow to store ingested nutrients or to regulate the effort put into nutrient assimilation. We found that these two strategies are beneficial at different fluctuation frequencies of the nutrients, but may positively interact at intermediate frequencies. The corresponding experiments supported our model results. We found that the temporal structure of nutrient fluctuations indeed has strong effects on the juvenile somatic growth rate of {\itshape Daphnia}. Predator colimitation by energy and essential biochemical nutrients gave rise to another physiological strategy. High-quality prey species may render themselves indispensable in a scenario of predator-mediated coexistence by being the only source of essential biochemical nutrients, such as cholesterol. Thereby, the high-quality prey may even compensate for a lacking defense and ensure its persistence in competition with other more defended prey species. We found a similar effect in a model where algae and bacteria compete for nutrients. Now, being the only source of a compound that is required by the competitor (bacteria) prevented the competitive exclusion of the algae. In this case, the essential compounds were the organic carbon provided by the algae. Here again, being indispensable served as a prey strategy that ensured its coexistence. The latter scenario also gave rise to the application of the two metabolic strategies of autotrophy and heterotrophy by algae and bacteria, respectively. We found that their coexistence allowed the recycling of resources in a microbial loop that would otherwise be lost. Instead, these resources were made available to higher trophic levels, increasing the trophic transfer efficiency in food webs. The predation process comprises the next higher level of factors shaping the predator-prey interaction, besides these factors that originated from the functioning or composition of individuals. Here, I focused on defensive mechanisms and investigated multiple scenarios of static or adaptive combinations of prey defense and predator offense. I confirmed and extended earlier reports on the coexistence-promoting effects of partially lower palatability of the prey community. When bacteria and algae are coexisting, a higher palatability of bacteria may increase the average predator biomass, with the side effect of making the population dynamics more regular. This may facilitate experimental investigations and interpretations. If defense and offense are adaptive, this allows organisms to maximize their growth rate. Besides this fitness-enhancing effect, I found that co-adaptation may provide the predator-prey system with the flexibility to buffer external perturbations. On top of these rather internal factors, environmental drivers also affect predator-prey interactions. I showed that environmental nutrient fluctuations may create a spatio-temporal resource heterogeneity that selects for different predator strategies. I hypothesized that this might favour either storage or acclimation specialists, depending on the frequency of the environmental fluctuations. We found that many of these factors promote the coexistence of different strategies and may therefore support and sustain biodiversity. Thus, they might be relevant for the maintenance of crucial ecosystem functions that also affect us humans. Besides this, the richness of factors that impact predator-prey interactions might explain why so many species, especially in the planktonic regime, are able to coexist. N2 - Organismen interagieren miteinander und mit ihrer Umwelt. Innerhalb dieses Netzwerks von Interaktionen sind Fraßbeziehungen zwischen Räubern und ihrer Beute von zentraler Bedeutung. Sie werden auf verschiedenen Ebenen von unterschiedlichen Faktoren beeinflusst, was zur Ausprägung von diversen Strategien von Räuber oder Beute führen kann. Diese Faktoren und die Strategien die sie hervor bringen sind Gegenstand dieser Doktorarbeit. In mehreren Modellierungsstudien habe ich vielseitige Faktoren untersucht, die sich dem Aufbau einzelner Organismen, Verteidigungs- und Angriffsmechanismen sowie Umwelteinflüssen zuordnen lassen. Dabei konzentrierte ich mich auf ein etabliertes Modellsystem zur Erforschung von Räuber-Beute-Dynamiken und untersuchte die Fraßbeziehung zwischen Phytoplankton als Beute und Zooplankton als Räuber. Ich fand heraus, dass die Bereitstellung von essentiellen Ressourcen für Konkurrenten oder Räuber eine Strategie sein kann, mit der Beutearten sich vor dem Aussterben schützen können. Auch die direkte Verteidigung gegen den Räuber ist eine häufige Strategie zur Verringerung des Fraßdrucks und kann ebenfalls Koexistenz fördern. Für anpassungsfähige Verteidigung der Beute und Angriffsstärke des Räubers konnte ich zeigen, dass dies sowohl die Fitness erhöhen, als auch die Robustheit der Räuber-Beute-Dynamiken gegen äußere Störungen erhöhen kann. Weiterhin fand ich heraus, dass physiologische Anpassungsmechanismen wie Speicherung oder anpassungsfähige Aufnahme von Nährstoffen die Wachstumsrate des Räubers verbessern können, wenn die Qualität der verfügbaren Beute in der Umwelt des Räubers fluktuiert. Viele der Strategien, die ich in dieser Arbeit herausgestellt habe, können die Koexistenz von verschiedenen Arten fördern und damit zu erhöhter Biodiversität beitragen, welche wiederum entscheidend ist für die Stabilität von Ökosystemen und deren Nutzbarkeit. KW - predator-prey KW - biodiversity KW - modelling KW - Räuber-Beute KW - Biodiversität KW - Modellierung Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-426587 ER -