Affiliation:
1. JF Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, University of Göttingen
2. Department of Soil Sciences and Land Resources, Institut Pertanian Bogor
3. Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use
4. Russian Academy of Sciences, A.N. Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution
Abstract
Agricultural expansion is among the main threats to biodiversity and functions of tropical ecosystems. It has been shown that conversion of rainforest into plantations erodes biodiversity, but further consequences for food-web structure and energetics of belowground communities remains little explored. We used a unique combination of stable isotope analysis and food-web energetics to analyze in a comprehensive way consequences of the conversion of rainforest into oil palm and rubber plantations on the structure of and channeling of energy through soil animal food webs in Sumatra, Indonesia. Across the animal groups studied, most of the taxa had lower litter-calibrated Δ13C values in plantations than in rainforests, suggesting that they switched to freshly-fixed plant carbon ('fast' energy channeling) in plantations from the detrital C pathway ('slow' energy channeling) in rainforests. These shifts led to changes in isotopic divergence, dispersion, evenness, and uniqueness. However, earthworms as major detritivores stayed unchanged in their trophic niche and monopolized the detrital pathway in plantations, resulting in similar energetic metrics across land-use systems. Functional diversity metrics of soil food webs were associated with reduced amount of litter, tree density, and species richness in plantations, providing guidelines on how to improve the complexity of the structure of and channeling of energy through soil food webs. Our results highlight the strong restructuring of soil food webs with the conversion of rainforest into plantations threatening soil functioning and ecosystem stability in the long term.
Funder
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
China Scholarship Council
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Subject
General Immunology and Microbiology,General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology,General Medicine,General Neuroscience
Cited by
17 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献