Department of Coastal Systems, NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Burg, Texel, The Netherlands.
Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands.
PeerJ. 2023 Sep 6;11:e15943. doi: 10.7717/peerj.15943. eCollection 2023.
Arthropods play a crucial role in terrestrial ecosystems, for instance in mediating energy fluxes and in forming the food base for many organisms. To better understand their functional role in such ecosystem processes, monitoring of trends in arthropod biomass is essential. Obtaining direct measurements of the body mass of individual specimens is laborious. Therefore, these data are often indirectly acquired by utilizing allometric length-biomass relationships based on a correlative parameter, such as body length. Previous studies have often used such relationships with a low taxonomic resolution and/or small sample size and/or adopted regressions calibrated in different biomes. Despite the scientific interest in the ecology of arctic arthropods, no site-specific family-level length-biomass relationships have hitherto been published. Here we present 27 family-specific length-biomass relationships from two sites in the High Arctic: Zackenberg in northeast Greenland and Knipovich in north Taimyr, Russia. We show that length-biomass regressions from different sites within the same biome did not affect estimates of phenology but did result in substantially different estimates of arthropod biomass. Estimates of daily biomass at Zackenberg were on average 24% higher when calculated using regressions for Knipovich compared to using regressions for Zackenberg. In addition, calculations of daily arthropod biomass at Zackenberg based on order-level regressions from frequently cited studies in literature revealed overestimations of arthropod biomass ranging from 69.7% to 130% compared to estimates based on regressions for Zackenberg. Our results illustrate that the use of allometric relationships from different sites can significantly alter the biological interpretation of, for instance, the interaction between insectivorous birds and their arthropod prey. We conclude that length-biomass relationships should be locally established rather than being based on global relationships.
节肢动物在陆地生态系统中起着至关重要的作用，例如在介导能量通量以及为许多生物形成食物基础方面。为了更好地了解它们在这些生态系统过程中的功能作用，监测节肢动物生物量的趋势至关重要。直接测量个体标本的体重非常费力。因此，这些数据通常是通过利用基于相关参数（例如体长）的种间体长-生物量关系间接获得的。以前的研究通常使用具有低分类分辨率和/或小样本量和/或在不同生物群落中校准的回归的这种关系。尽管人们对北极节肢动物生态学感兴趣，但迄今为止，尚无特定于特定地点的科水平体长-生物量关系。在这里，我们提出了来自北极两个地点的 27 种特定于科的体长-生物量关系：格陵兰东北部的 Zackenberg 和俄罗斯北泰梅尔的 Knipovich。我们表明，来自同一生物群落的不同地点的体长-生物量回归不会影响物候的估计，但会导致节肢动物生物量的估计有很大差异。与使用 Zackenberg 的回归相比，当使用 Knipovich 的回归计算时，Zackenberg 的每日生物量估计平均高 24％。此外，根据文献中经常引用的研究的订单水平回归计算的 Zackenberg 的每日节肢动物生物量的计算结果表明，与基于 Zackenberg 的回归的估计相比，节肢动物生物量的估计值过高，范围从 69.7％到 130％。我们的结果表明，使用来自不同地点的种间关系可以显著改变对例如食虫鸟与其节肢动物猎物之间相互作用的生物学解释。我们得出的结论是，体长-生物量关系应该在本地建立，而不是基于全球关系。
