CREAF, Edifici C Campus de Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Valles, Spain.
Museum of Comparative Zoology and Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2024 Jan;27(1):e14335. doi: 10.1111/ele.14335. Epub 2023 Nov 16.
Foraging decisions shape the structure of food webs. Therefore, a behavioural shift in a single species can potentially modify resource-flow dynamics of entire ecosystems. To examine this, we conducted a field experiment to assess foraging niche dynamics of semi-arboreal brown anole lizards in the presence/absence of predatory ground-dwelling curly-tailed lizards in a replicated set of island ecosystems. One year after experimental translocation, brown anoles exposed to these predators had drastically increased perch height and reduced consumption of marine-derived food resources. This foraging niche shift altered marine-to-terrestrial resource-flow dynamics and persisted in the diets of the first-generation offspring. Furthermore, female lizards that displayed more risk-taking behaviours consumed more marine prey on islands with predators present. Our results show how predator-driven rapid behavioural shifts can alter food-web connectivity between oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems and underscore the importance of studying behaviour-mediated niche shifts to understand ecosystem functioning in rapidly changing environments.
觅食决策塑造了食物网的结构。因此，单个物种的行为转变可能会改变整个生态系统的资源流动动态。为了检验这一点，我们在一组重复的岛屿生态系统中进行了一项野外实验，以评估在有/无捕食性地面蜥蜴的情况下半树栖棕色鬣蜥的觅食生态位动态。在实验性转移后的一年，暴露于这些捕食者的棕色鬣蜥明显增加了栖木高度，并减少了对海洋衍生食物资源的消耗。这种觅食生态位转变改变了海洋到陆地的资源流动动态，并在第一代后代的饮食中持续存在。此外，表现出更多冒险行为的雌性蜥蜴在有捕食者存在的岛屿上消耗更多的海洋猎物。我们的研究结果表明，捕食者驱动的快速行为转变如何改变海洋和陆地生态系统之间的食物网连接，并强调了研究行为介导的生态位转变以了解快速变化环境中的生态系统功能的重要性。
