The DOI matches its Crossref record; 55 of the 55 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Global patterns in the impact of marine herbivores on benthic primary producers
Open accessAbstract
Despite the importance of consumers in structuring communities, and the widespread assumption that consumption is strongest at low latitudes, empirical tests for global scale patterns in the magnitude of consumer impacts are limited. In marine systems, the long tradition of experimentally excluding herbivores in their natural environments allows consumer impacts to be quantified on global scales using consistent methodology. We present a quantitative synthesis of 613 marine herbivore exclusion experiments to test the influence of consumer traits, producer traits and the environment on the strength of herbivore impacts on benthic producers. Across the globe, marine herbivores profoundly reduced producer abundance (by 68% on average), with strongest effects in rocky intertidal habitats and the weakest effects on habitats dominated by vascular plants. Unexpectedly, we found little or no influence of latitude or mean annual water temperature. Instead, herbivore impacts differed most consistently among producer taxonomic and morphological groups. Our results show that grazing impacts on plant abundance are better predicted by producer traits than by large‐scale variation in habitat or mean temperature, and that there is a previously unrecognised degree of phylogenetic conservatism in producer susceptibility to consumption.
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Cites
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Herbivores and the Number of Tree Species in Tropical Forests
Janzen, D. H. (1970) · The American Naturalist · doi:10.1086/282687 · Cited by 4,774
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Marine Ecoregions of the World: A Bioregionalization of Coastal and Shelf Areas
Spalding, M. D., Fox, H. E., Allen, G. R., Davidson, N., Ferdaña, Z. A., Finlayson, M., Halpern, B. S., Jorge, M. A., Lombana, A., Lourie, S. A., et al. (2007) · BioScience · doi:10.1641/b570707 · Cited by 4,084
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Kelp forest ecosystems: biodiversity, stability, resilience and future
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Is There a Latitudinal Gradient in the Importance of Biotic Interactions?
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Cited by
Vergés, A., Steinberg, P. D., Hay, M. E., Poore, A. G. B., Campbell, A. H., Ballesteros, E., Heck, K. L., Booth, D. J., Coleman, M. A., Feary, D. A., et al. (2014) · Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.0846 · Cited by 1,021
Self-citationStructure and Functioning of Dryland Ecosystems in a Changing World
Maestre, F. T., Eldridge, D. J., Soliveres, S., Kéfi, S., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Bowker, M. A., García-Palacios, P., Gaitán, J., Gallardo, A., Lázaro, R., et al. (2016) · Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics · doi:10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-121415-032311 · Cited by 561
Marine biodiversity and ecosystem functioning: what's known and what's next?
Gamfeldt, L., Lefcheck, J. S., Byrnes, J. E. K., Cardinale, B. J., Duffy, J. E., & Griffin, J. N. (2015) · Oikos · doi:10.1111/oik.01549 · Cited by 297
Self-citationTropical rabbitfish and the deforestation of a warming temperate sea
Vergés, A., Tomas, F., Cebrian, E., Ballesteros, E., Kizilkaya, Z., Dendrinos, P., Karamanlidis, A. A., Spiegel, D., & Sala, E. (2014) · Journal of Ecology · doi:10.1111/1365-2745.12324 · Cited by 227
Metadata
- Authors
- Poore, A. G. B., Campbell, A. H., Coleman, R. A., Edgar, G. J., Jormalainen, V., Reynolds, P. L., Sotka, E. E., Stachowicz, J. J., Taylor, R. B., Vanderklift, M. A., & Emmett Duffy, J.
- Venue
- Ecology Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2012-05-29
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 912-922
- ISSN
- 1461-023X (ISSN-L)
- 1461-0248
- OpenAlex
- W2129098375
- Cited by
- 417
- References
- 55
- FWCI
- 20.01
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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- Poore, A. G. B., Campbell, A. H., Coleman, R. A., Edgar, G. J., Jormalainen, V., Reynolds, P. L., Sotka, E. E., Stachowicz, J. J., Taylor, R. B., Vanderklift, M. A., & Emmett Duffy, J. (2012). Global patterns in the impact of marine herbivores on benthic primary producers. Ecology Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01804.x
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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