@phdthesis{Ehrlich2019,
  author    = {Ehrlich, Elias},
  title     = {On the role of trade-offs in predator-prey interactions},
  doi       = {10.25932/publishup-43063},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-430631},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {192},
  year      = {2019},
  abstract  = {Predation drives coexistence, evolution and population dynamics of species in food webs, and has strong impacts on related ecosystem functions (e.g. primary production). The effect of predation on these processes largely depends on the trade-offs between functional traits in the predator and prey community. Trade-offs between defence against predation and competitive ability, for example, allow for prey speciation and predator-mediated coexistence of prey species with different strategies (defended or competitive), which may stabilize the overall food web dynamics. While the importance of such trade-offs for coexistence is widely known, we lack an understanding and the empirical evidence of how the variety of differently shaped trade-offs at multiple trophic levels affect biodiversity, trait adaptation and biomass dynamics in food webs. Such mechanistic understanding is crucial for predictions and management decisions that aim to maintain biodiversity and the capability of communities to adapt to environmental change ensuring their persistence. In this dissertation, after a general introduction to predator-prey interactions and tradeoffs, I first focus on trade-offs in the prey between qualitatively different types of defence (e.g. camouflage or escape behaviour) and their costs. I show that these different types lead to different patterns of predator-mediated coexistence and population dynamics, by using a simple predator-prey model. In a second step, I elaborate quantitative aspects of trade-offs and demonstrates that the shape of the trade-off curve in combination with trait-fitness relationships strongly affects competition among different prey types: Either specialized species with extreme trait combinations (undefended or completely defended) coexist, or a species with an intermediate defence level dominates. The developed theory on trade-off shapes and coexistence is kept general, allowing for applications apart from defence-competitiveness trade-offs. Thirdly, I tested the theory on trade-off shapes on a long-term field data set of phytoplankton from Lake Constance. The measured concave trade-off between defence and growth governs seasonal trait changes of phytoplankton in response to an altering grazing pressure by zooplankton, and affects the maintenance of trait variation in the community. In a fourth step, I analyse the interplay of different tradeoffs at multiple trophic levels with plankton data of Lake Constance and a corresponding tritrophic food web model. The results show that the trait and biomass dynamics of the different three trophic levels are interrelated in a trophic biomass-trait cascade, leading to unintuitive patterns of trait changes that are reversed in comparison to predictions from bitrophic systems. Finally, in the general discussion, I extract main ideas on trade-offs in multitrophic systems, develop a graphical theory on trade-off-based coexistence, discuss the interplay of intra- and interspecific trade-offs, and end with a management-oriented view on the results of the dissertation, describing how food webs may respond to future global changes, given their trade-offs.},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Lischke2015,
  author    = {Lischke, Betty},
  title     = {Food web regulation under different forcing regimes in shallow lakes},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-89149},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t Potsdam},
  pages     = {131},
  year      = {2015},
  abstract  = {The standing stock and production of organismal biomass depends strongly on the organisms' biotic environment, which arises from trophic and non-trophic interactions among them. The trophic interactions between the different groups of organisms form the food web of an ecosystem, with the autotrophic and bacterial production at the basis and potentially several levels of consumers on top of the producers. Feeding interactions can regulate communities either by severe grazing pressure or by shortage of resources or prey production, termed top-down and bottom-up control, respectively. The limitations of all communities conglomerate in the food web regulation, which is subject to abiotic and biotic forcing regimes arising from external and internal constraints. This dissertation presents the effects of alterations in two abiotic, external forcing regimes, terrestrial matter input and long-lasting low temperatures in winter. Diverse methodological approaches, a complex ecosystem model study and the analysis of two whole-lake measurements, were performed to investigate effects for the food web regulation and the resulting consequences at the species, community and ecosystem scale. Thus, all types of organisms, autotrophs and heterotrophs, at all trophic levels were investigated to gain a comprehensive overview of the effects of the two mentioned altered forcing regimes. In addition, an extensive evaluation of the trophic interactions and resulting carbon fluxes along the pelagic and benthic food web was performed to display the efficiencies of the trophic energy transfer within the food webs. All studies were conducted in shallow lakes, which is worldwide the most abundant type of lakes. The specific morphology of shallow lakes allows that the benthic production contributes substantially to the whole-lake production. Further, as shallow lakes are often small they are especially sensitive to both, changes in the input of terrestrial organic matter and the atmospheric temperature. Another characteristic of shallow lakes is their appearance in alternative stable states. They are either in a clear-water or turbid state, where macrophytes and phytoplankton dominate, respectively. Both states can stabilize themselves through various mechanisms. These two alternative states and stabilizing mechanisms are integrated in the complex ecosystem model PCLake, which was used to investigate the effects of the enhanced terrestrial particulate organic matter (t-POM) input to lakes. The food web regulation was altered by three distinct pathways: (1) Zoobenthos received more food, increased in biomass which favored benthivorous fish and those reduced the available light due to bioturbation. (2) Zooplankton substituted autochthonous organic matter in their diet by suspended t-POM, thus the autochthonous organic matter remaining in the water reduced its transparency. (3) T-POM suspended into the water and reduced directly the available light. As macrophytes are more light-sensitive than phytoplankton they suffered the most from the lower transparency. Consequently, the resilience of the clear-water state was reduced by enhanced t-POM inputs, which makes the turbid state more likely at a given nutrient concentration. In two subsequent winters long-lasting low temperatures and a concurrent long duration of ice coverage was observed which resulted in low overall adult fish biomasses in the two study lakes - Schulzensee and Gollinsee, characterized by having and not having submerged macrophytes, respectively. Before the partial winterkill of fish Schulzensee allowed for a higher proportion of piscivorous fish than Gollinsee. However, the partial winterkill of fish aligned both communities as piscivorous fish are more sensitive to low oxygen concentrations. Young of the year fish benefitted extremely from the absence of adult fish due to lower predation pressure. Therefore, they could exert a strong top-down control on crustaceans, which restructured the entire zooplankton community leading to low crustacean biomasses and a community composition characterized by copepodites and nauplii. As a result, ciliates were released from top-down control, increased to high biomasses compared to lakes of various trophic states and depths and dominated the zooplankton community. While being very abundant in the study lakes and having the highest weight specific grazing rates among the zooplankton, ciliates exerted potentially a strong top-down control on small phytoplankton and particle-attached bacteria. This resulted in a higher proportion of large phytoplankton compared to other lakes. Additionally, the phytoplankton community was evenly distributed presumably due to the numerous fast growing and highly specific ciliate grazers. Although, the pelagic food web was completely restructured after the subsequent partial winterkills of fish, both lakes were resistant to effects of this forcing regime at the ecosystem scale. The consistently high predation pressure on phytoplankton prevented that Schulzensee switched from the clear-water to the turbid state. Further mechanisms, which potentially stabilized the clear-water state, were allelopathic effects by macrophytes and nutrient limitation in summer. The pelagic autotrophic and bacterial production was an order of magnitude more efficient transferred to animal consumers than the respective benthic production, despite the alterations of the food web structure after the partial winterkill of fish. Thus, the compiled mass-balanced whole-lake food webs suggested that the benthic bacterial and autotrophic production, which exceeded those of the pelagic habitat, was not used by animal consumers. This holds even true if the food quality, additional consumers such as ciliates, benthic protozoa and meiobenthos, the pelagic-benthic link and the potential oxygen limitation of macrobenthos were considered. Therefore, low benthic efficiencies suggest that lakes are primarily pelagic systems at least at the animal consumer level. Overall, this dissertation gives insights into the regulation of organism groups in the pelagic and benthic habitat at each trophic level under two different forcing regimes and displays the efficiency of the carbon transfer in both habitats. The results underline that the alterations of external forcing regimes affect all hierarchical level including the ecosystem.},
  language  = {en}
}