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Trophic indices for micronektonic fishes reveal their dependence on the microbial system in the North Atlantic

The importance of microbes for the functioning of oceanic food webs is well established, but their relevance for top consumers is still poorly appreciated. Large differences in individual size, and consequently in growth rates and the relevant spatial and temporal scales involved, make the integrati...

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Autores principales: Bode, Antonio, Olivar, M. Pilar, Hernández-León, Santiago
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8055700/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33875692
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87767-x
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author Bode, Antonio
Olivar, M. Pilar
Hernández-León, Santiago
author_facet Bode, Antonio
Olivar, M. Pilar
Hernández-León, Santiago
author_sort Bode, Antonio
collection PubMed
description The importance of microbes for the functioning of oceanic food webs is well established, but their relevance for top consumers is still poorly appreciated. Large differences in individual size, and consequently in growth rates and the relevant spatial and temporal scales involved, make the integration of microorganisms and large metazoans in a common food web framework difficult. Using stable isotopes, this study estimated the trophic position of 13 species of micronektonic fishes to examine the microbial and metazoan contribution to mid trophic level consumers. Vertically migrant species displayed higher trophic positions than non-migrant species in all depth layers. The estimated trophic positions agreed well with those from the literature, but all species displayed mean increases between 0.5 and 0.8 trophic positions when taking into account microbial trophic steps. Trophic position, but not the relative importance of the microbial food web, increased with individual size, suggesting that current estimates of the trophic position of top consumers and of the length of oceanic food webs are too low because they are based only on metazoan trophic steps. This finding calls for a review of trophic position estimates and of the efficiency of trophic transfers along oceanic food webs.
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spelling pubmed-80557002021-04-22 Trophic indices for micronektonic fishes reveal their dependence on the microbial system in the North Atlantic Bode, Antonio Olivar, M. Pilar Hernández-León, Santiago Sci Rep Article The importance of microbes for the functioning of oceanic food webs is well established, but their relevance for top consumers is still poorly appreciated. Large differences in individual size, and consequently in growth rates and the relevant spatial and temporal scales involved, make the integration of microorganisms and large metazoans in a common food web framework difficult. Using stable isotopes, this study estimated the trophic position of 13 species of micronektonic fishes to examine the microbial and metazoan contribution to mid trophic level consumers. Vertically migrant species displayed higher trophic positions than non-migrant species in all depth layers. The estimated trophic positions agreed well with those from the literature, but all species displayed mean increases between 0.5 and 0.8 trophic positions when taking into account microbial trophic steps. Trophic position, but not the relative importance of the microbial food web, increased with individual size, suggesting that current estimates of the trophic position of top consumers and of the length of oceanic food webs are too low because they are based only on metazoan trophic steps. This finding calls for a review of trophic position estimates and of the efficiency of trophic transfers along oceanic food webs. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-04-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8055700/ /pubmed/33875692 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87767-x Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Bode, Antonio
Olivar, M. Pilar
Hernández-León, Santiago
Trophic indices for micronektonic fishes reveal their dependence on the microbial system in the North Atlantic
title Trophic indices for micronektonic fishes reveal their dependence on the microbial system in the North Atlantic
title_full Trophic indices for micronektonic fishes reveal their dependence on the microbial system in the North Atlantic
title_fullStr Trophic indices for micronektonic fishes reveal their dependence on the microbial system in the North Atlantic
title_full_unstemmed Trophic indices for micronektonic fishes reveal their dependence on the microbial system in the North Atlantic
title_short Trophic indices for micronektonic fishes reveal their dependence on the microbial system in the North Atlantic
title_sort trophic indices for micronektonic fishes reveal their dependence on the microbial system in the north atlantic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8055700/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33875692
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87767-x
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