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Top‐down effects of foraging decisions on local, landscape and regional biodiversity of resources (DivGUD)
Author(s) -
Eccard Jana A.,
Mendes Ferreira Clara,
Peredo Arce Andres,
Dammhahn Melanie
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
ecology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.852
H-Index - 265
eISSN - 1461-0248
pISSN - 1461-023X
DOI - 10.1111/ele.13901
Subject(s) - foraging , ecology , biodiversity , abundance (ecology) , trophic level , trait , resource (disambiguation) , biology , community , predation , trophic cascade , optimal foraging theory , geography , ecosystem , food web , computer network , computer science , programming language
Foraging by consumers acts as a biotic filtering mechanism for biodiversity at the trophic level of resources. Variation in foraging behaviour has cascading effects on abundance, diversity, and functional trait composition of the community of resource species. Here we propose diversity at giving‐up density (DivGUD), i.e. when foragers quit exploiting a patch, as a novel concept and simple measure quantifying cascading effects at multiple spatial scales. In experimental landscapes with an assemblage of plant seeds, patch residency of wild rodents decreased local α‐DivGUD (via elevated mortality of species with large seeds) and regional γ‐DivGUD, while dissimilarity among patches in a landscape (ß‐DivGUD) increased. By linking theories of adaptive foraging behaviour with community ecology, DivGUD allows to investigate cascading indirect predation effects, e.g. the ecology‐of‐fear framework, feedbacks between functional trait composition of resource species and consumer communities, and effects of inter‐individual differences among foragers on the biodiversity of resource communities.