Taking the trophic bypass: aquatic-terrestrial linkage reduces methylmercury in a terrestrial food web
Ecosystems can be linked by the movement of matter and nutrients across habitat boundaries via aquatic insect emergence. Aquatic organisms tend to have higher concentrations of certain toxic contaminants such as methylmercury (MeHg) compared to their terrestrial counterparts. If aquatic organisms co...
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ftdatacite:10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3296687.v1 2023-05-15T16:51:32+02:00 Taking the trophic bypass: aquatic-terrestrial linkage reduces methylmercury in a terrestrial food web Bartrons, Mireia Gratton, Claudio Spiesman, Brian J. M. Jake Vander Zanden 2016 https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3296687.v1 https://figshare.com/collections/Taking_the_trophic_bypass_aquatic-terrestrial_linkage_reduces_methylmercury_in_a_terrestrial_food_web/3296687/1 unknown Figshare https://dx.doi.org/10.1890/14-0038.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3296687 CC-BY http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us CC-BY Environmental Science Ecology FOS Biological sciences Collection article 2016 ftdatacite https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3296687.v1 https://doi.org/10.1890/14-0038.1 https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3296687 2021-11-05T12:55:41Z Ecosystems can be linked by the movement of matter and nutrients across habitat boundaries via aquatic insect emergence. Aquatic organisms tend to have higher concentrations of certain toxic contaminants such as methylmercury (MeHg) compared to their terrestrial counterparts. If aquatic organisms come to land, terrestrial organisms that consume them are expected to have elevated MeHg concentrations. But emergent aquatic insects could have other impacts as well, such as altering consumer trophic position or increasing ecosystem productivity as a result of nutrient inputs from insect carcasses. We measure MeHg in terrestrial arthropods at two lakes in northeastern Iceland and use carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes to quantify aquatic reliance and trophic position. Across all terrestrial focal arthropod taxa (Lycosidae, Linyphiidae, Acari, Opiliones), aquatic reliance had significant direct and indirect (via changes in trophic position) effects on terrestrial consumer MeHg. However, contrary to our expectations, terrestrial consumers that consumed aquatic prey had lower MeHg concentrations than consumers that ate mostly terrestrial prey. We hypothesize that this is due to the lower trophic position of consumers feeding directly on midges relative to those that fed mostly on terrestrial prey and that had, on average, higher trophic positions. Thus, direct consumption of aquatic inputs results in a trophic bypass that creates a shorter terrestrial food web and reduced biomagnification of MeHg across the food web. Our finding that MeHg was lower at terrestrial sites with aquatic inputs runs counter to the conventional wisdom that aquatic systems are a source of MeHg contamination to surrounding terrestrial ecosystems. Article in Journal/Newspaper Iceland DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
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Open Polar |
collection |
DataCite Metadata Store (German National Library of Science and Technology) |
op_collection_id |
ftdatacite |
language |
unknown |
topic |
Environmental Science Ecology FOS Biological sciences |
spellingShingle |
Environmental Science Ecology FOS Biological sciences Bartrons, Mireia Gratton, Claudio Spiesman, Brian J. M. Jake Vander Zanden Taking the trophic bypass: aquatic-terrestrial linkage reduces methylmercury in a terrestrial food web |
topic_facet |
Environmental Science Ecology FOS Biological sciences |
description |
Ecosystems can be linked by the movement of matter and nutrients across habitat boundaries via aquatic insect emergence. Aquatic organisms tend to have higher concentrations of certain toxic contaminants such as methylmercury (MeHg) compared to their terrestrial counterparts. If aquatic organisms come to land, terrestrial organisms that consume them are expected to have elevated MeHg concentrations. But emergent aquatic insects could have other impacts as well, such as altering consumer trophic position or increasing ecosystem productivity as a result of nutrient inputs from insect carcasses. We measure MeHg in terrestrial arthropods at two lakes in northeastern Iceland and use carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes to quantify aquatic reliance and trophic position. Across all terrestrial focal arthropod taxa (Lycosidae, Linyphiidae, Acari, Opiliones), aquatic reliance had significant direct and indirect (via changes in trophic position) effects on terrestrial consumer MeHg. However, contrary to our expectations, terrestrial consumers that consumed aquatic prey had lower MeHg concentrations than consumers that ate mostly terrestrial prey. We hypothesize that this is due to the lower trophic position of consumers feeding directly on midges relative to those that fed mostly on terrestrial prey and that had, on average, higher trophic positions. Thus, direct consumption of aquatic inputs results in a trophic bypass that creates a shorter terrestrial food web and reduced biomagnification of MeHg across the food web. Our finding that MeHg was lower at terrestrial sites with aquatic inputs runs counter to the conventional wisdom that aquatic systems are a source of MeHg contamination to surrounding terrestrial ecosystems. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Bartrons, Mireia Gratton, Claudio Spiesman, Brian J. M. Jake Vander Zanden |
author_facet |
Bartrons, Mireia Gratton, Claudio Spiesman, Brian J. M. Jake Vander Zanden |
author_sort |
Bartrons, Mireia |
title |
Taking the trophic bypass: aquatic-terrestrial linkage reduces methylmercury in a terrestrial food web |
title_short |
Taking the trophic bypass: aquatic-terrestrial linkage reduces methylmercury in a terrestrial food web |
title_full |
Taking the trophic bypass: aquatic-terrestrial linkage reduces methylmercury in a terrestrial food web |
title_fullStr |
Taking the trophic bypass: aquatic-terrestrial linkage reduces methylmercury in a terrestrial food web |
title_full_unstemmed |
Taking the trophic bypass: aquatic-terrestrial linkage reduces methylmercury in a terrestrial food web |
title_sort |
taking the trophic bypass: aquatic-terrestrial linkage reduces methylmercury in a terrestrial food web |
publisher |
Figshare |
publishDate |
2016 |
url |
https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3296687.v1 https://figshare.com/collections/Taking_the_trophic_bypass_aquatic-terrestrial_linkage_reduces_methylmercury_in_a_terrestrial_food_web/3296687/1 |
genre |
Iceland |
genre_facet |
Iceland |
op_relation |
https://dx.doi.org/10.1890/14-0038.1 https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3296687 |
op_rights |
CC-BY http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3296687.v1 https://doi.org/10.1890/14-0038.1 https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3296687 |
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1766041662853742592 |