Romana Limberger ist Post Doc in der Forschungsabteilung for Limnologie an der Universität Innsbruck.
Abstract:
Environments are changing, across both time and space. Trophic interactions can complicate our understanding of how communities respond to environmental change because of indirect effects resulting from altered food web interactions. Further complexity arises because organisms do not only respond to the environment, but they also modify it, and can thus enhance or reduce externally imposed changes in the environment. In my talk, I will present a series of mesocosm experiments investigating these aspects of environmental change in multitrophic aquatic communities. Specifically, we tested (1) if alterations of food web structure can influence the dynamics of dissolved organic carbon, (2) if habitat connectivity can maintain food web structure in changing environments, (3) if trophic groups differ in their response to spatial heterogeneity and habitat connectivity, and (4) if the presence and genotype composition of consumers influences the build-up of spatial heterogeneity. Collectively, these experiments demonstrate that organisms at upper trophic levels can alter the impact of temporal and spatial environmental change by influencing both biotic and abiotic ecosystem properties.