Ecological stoichiometry in aquatic food webs: food quality and multitrophic interactions.

生态化学计量学理论已经成功地加强了我们对消费者和猎物物种之间营养相互作用的理解。消费者和猎物的动态取决于猎物的营养成分相对于消费者的营养需求。然而，大多数关于这一主题的实验都使用了单一的消费物种和非常简单的猎物群落。因此，对于更自然的食物网中营养相互作用的化学计量约束的有效性，人们知之甚少。该项目旨在通过测试消费者选择高质量食物的能力，解决食物质量在多物种浮游动物-浮游植物相互作用中的重要性，以及通过调查不同质量的浮游植物通过草食动物繁殖到捕食性浮游动物和鱼类幼体，来加强我们对海洋中上层食物网中营养限制的了解。这些方面将在微观和中观领域进行实验分析，并从根本上提高我们预测沿海水域人类活动改变的生物地球化学对生态系统营养转移的影响的能力。

The ecological stoichiometry theory has been successful in enhancing our understanding of trophic interactions between consumer and prey species. Consumer and prey dynamics depend on the nutrient composition of the prey relative to the nutrient demand of the consumer. However, most experiments on this topic used a single consumer species and very simple prey communities. Therefore, little is known about the validity of stoichiometric constraints on trophic interactions in more natural food webs. This project seeks to enhance our understanding of nutritional constraints in marine pelagic food webs by testing the consumer’s ability to select high quality food, by addressing the importance of food quality in multispecies zooplankton-phytoplankton interactions and by investigating the propagation of different phytoplankton quality via herbivores to predatory zooplankton and fish larvae. These aspects will be experimentally analysed in microcosms and mesocosms and fundamentally enhance our ability to predict the consequences of anthropogenically altered biogeochemistry in coastal waters on trophic transfer in ecosystems.