Manipulating nutrient fluxes within a quantified food web: linking food web structure, ecological stoichiometry and biogeochemical processes

人类对生物群落的结构和功能有着深远的影响，这些影响往往表现在食物网的规模上。我们建议通过改变网络底部食物的可用性和质量来操纵一个具有高度分辨率数据的特征良好的量化食物网。这补充了我们已经获得的“自上而下”操纵同一系统的数据，我们引入了一个新的顶级捕食者。拟议的研究将通过改善光限制来刺激蒸汽中的藻类生产，从而增加食物网中本地途径的相对（和绝对）重要性。我们将探索生物组织多个层面的一系列反应，从个体物种的种群动态到生态系统过程和整个溪流代谢。此外，我们将利用这些经验数据来告知和发展新的理论模型，将代谢理论与食物网中的生态化学计量学联系起来。

Humans have profound effects on the structure and functioning of biological communities, and these are often manifested at the scale of the food web. We propose to manipulate a well characterised quantified food web for which we have highly resolved data, by altering the availability and quality of the food at the base of the web. This complements the data we have already obtained on a 'top-down' manipulation of the same system where we introduced a new top predator. The proposed research will stimulate algal production in the steam by ameliorating light limitation thereby increasing the relative (and absolute) importance of autocthonous pathways in the food web. We will explore a range of responses across multiple levels of biological organisation, from population dynamics of individual species to ecosystem processes and whole stream metabolism. Further we will use these empirical data to inform and develop new theoretical models that link metabolic theory and ecological stoichiometry in food webs.