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

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Helmut Hillebrand; Professor Dr. Arne Malzahn
• Subject Area: Ecology and Biodiversity of Animals and Ecosystems, Organismic Interactions
• Term: from 2009 to 2012
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 108646046

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.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants