Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2013. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Ecosystems 16 (2013): 1130-1138, doi:10.1007/s10021-013-9672-1.
Description:
We evaluated the potential contribution of allochthonous biomass subsidies to the upper trophic levels of offshore food webs in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico (GOM). We made this evaluation considering nitrogen, an essential and often limiting nutrient in coastal ecosystems, to estimate the potential production of within-ecosystem biomass relative to the known import of biomass from an adjacent seagrass dominated ecosystem. When adjusted for trophic transfer efficiency, we found the biomass subsidy from a single species (pinfish, Lagodon rhomboides) from neashore seagrass habitat to the offshore GOM to be greater than the amount of nitrogen exported by a two major rivers and local submarine ground water discharge. Our calculations show that seagrass-derived biomass accounts for ~25% of the total potential production in the northeastern GOM. This estimate is in agreement with a previous study that found 18.5-25% of the biomass in a predatory reef fish was derived from seagrass biomass inputs. These results indicate that all of the sources we consider account for the majority of the nitrogen available to the food web in the northeastern GOM. Our approach could be adapted to other coupled ecosystems to determine the relative importance of biomass subsidies to coastal ocean food 48 webs.
Description:
Funding for the field surveys was provided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service / State Wildlife federal grant number T-15, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission agreement number 08007. Additional funding support was provided by the Florida Institute of Oceanography and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Northern Gulf of Mexico Cooperative Institute 191001-363558-01).
Description:
2014-05-08
Keywords:
Ecosystem subsidies
;
Allocthonous
;
Biomass
;
Seagrass
;
Food web
;
Secondary production
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
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