Human-induced trophic cascades along the fecal detritus pathway

PLoS One. 2013 Oct 16;8(10):e75819. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075819. eCollection 2013.

Abstract

Human presence and activity in tropical forest is thought to exert top-down regulation over the various 'green-world' pathways of plant-based foodwebs. However, these effects have never been explored for the 'brown-world' pathways of fecal-detritus webs. The strong effects of humans on tropical game mammals are likely to indirectly influence fecal detritivores (including Scarabaeine dung beetles), with subsequent indirect impacts on detrivore-mediated and plant-facilitating detrital processes. Across a 380-km gradient of human influence in the western Brazilian Amazon, we conducted the first landscape-level assessment of human-induced cascade effects on the fecal detritus pathway, by coupling data on human impact, game mammal and detritivore community structure, and rate measurements of a key detritus process (i.e. dung beetle-mediated secondary seed dispersal). We found evidence that human impact indirectly influences both the diversity and biomass of fecal detritivores, but not detritivore-mediated processes. Cascade strength varied across detritivore groups defined by species' traits. We found smaller-bodied dung beetles were at higher risk of local decline in areas of human presence, and that body size was a better predictor of cascade structure than fecal resource manipulation strategy. Cascade strength was also stronger in upland, unflooded forests, than in seasonally flooded forests. Our results suggest that the impact of human activity in tropical forest on fecal-detritus food web structure is mediated by both species' traits and habitat type. Further research will be required to determine the conditions under which these cascade effects influence fecal-detritus web function.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Biodiversity
  • Body Size / physiology*
  • Brazil
  • Coleoptera / physiology*
  • Defecation
  • Ecosystem
  • Feces*
  • Food Chain*
  • Humans
  • Mammals / physiology*
  • Population Dynamics
  • Trees
  • Tropical Climate

Grants and funding

Financial support for this study came from a Brazilian Conselho Nacional Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico grant to EN, SS and JL (CNPq - 480645/2008-6; http://www.cnpq.br/), a United States National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network grant to SS (NSF Grant No. DEB-0043443; http://www.nsf.gov/), a DEFRA/UK Darwin Initiative grant to CAP (Ref. 16-001; http://www.defra.gov.uk/) and a pre-dissertation travel award from the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology at Columbia University to EN. EN also acknowledges funding from a Columbia University Faculty Fellowship and the Yeh Family Foundation. No individuals employed or contracted by any of these funders other than the named authors played any role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.