Ecosystem connectivity and configuration can mediate instability at a distance in metaecosystems

Ecosystems are connected by flows of nutrients and organisms. Changes to connectivity and nutrient enrichment may destabilise ecosystem dynamics far from the nutrient source. We used gradostats to examine the effects of trophic connectivity (movement of consumers and producers) versus nutrient-only connectivity on the dynamics of Daphnia pulex (consumers) and algae (resources) in two metaecosystem configurations (linear vs. dendritic). We found that Daphnia peak population size and instability (coefficient of variation; CV) increased as distance from the nutrient input increased, but these effects were lower in metaecosystems connected by all trophic levels compared with nutrient-only connected systems and/or in dendritic compared with linear systems. We examined the effects of trophic connectivity (i.e. both trophic levels move rather than one or the other) using a generic model to qualitatively assess whether the expectations align with the ecosystem dynamics we observed. Analysis of our model shows that increased Daphnia population sizes and fluctuations in consumer-resource dynamics are expected with nutrient connectivity, with this pattern being more pronounced in linear rather than dendritic systems. These results confirm that connectivity may propagate and even amplify instability over a metaecosystem to communities distant from the source disturbance, and suggest a direction for future experiments, that recreate conditions closer to those found in natural systems. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.