Top consumer abundance influences lake methane efflux
Devlin, S., Saarenheimo, J., Syväranta, J., & Jones, R. (2015). Top consumer abundance influences lake methane efflux. Nature Communications, 6, 8787. doi:10.1038/ncomms9787
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Nature CommunicationsDate
2015Discipline
Akvaattiset tieteetCopyright
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. This is an open access article licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Lakes are important habitats for biogeochemical cycling of carbon. The organization and
structure of aquatic communities influences the biogeochemical interactions between lakes
and the atmosphere. Understanding how trophic structure regulates ecosystem functions and
influences greenhouse gas efflux from lakes is critical to understanding global carbon cycling
and climate change. With a whole-lake experiment in which a previously fishless lake was
divided into two treatment basins where fish abundance was manipulated, we show how a
trophic cascade from fish to microbes affects methane efflux to the atmosphere. Here, fish
exert high grazing pressure and remove nearly all zooplankton. This reduction in zooplankton
density increases the abundance of methanotrophic bacteria, which in turn reduce CH4 efflux
rates by roughly 10 times. Given that globally there are millions of lakes emitting methane,
an important greenhouse gas, our findings that aquatic trophic interactions significantly
influence the biogeochemical cycle of methane has important implications.
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