A grasshopper's change in diet to high-energy carbohydrates while being hunted by spiders may affect the way soil releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to research results published this week in the journal Science.
Grasshoppers like to munch on nitrogen-rich grass because it stimulates their growth and reproduction.
But when spiders enter the picture, grasshoppers cope with the stress from fear of predation by shifting to carbohydrate-rich plants, setting in motion dynamic changes to the ecosystem they inhabit, scientists have found.
"Under stressful conditions they go to different parts of the 'grocery store' and choose different foods, changing the makeup of the plant community," said Oswald Schmitz, a co-author of the paper and an ecologist at Yale University.
The high-energy, carbohydrate diet also tilts a grasshopper's body chemistry toward carbon at the expense of nitrogen.
So when a grasshopper dies, its carcass breaks down more slowly, thus depriving the soil of high-quality fertilizer and slowing the decomposition of uneaten plants.
"This study casts a new light on the importance of predation in natural communities," said Saran Twombly, program director in the National Science Foundation's Division of Environmental Biology, which funded the research.
"A clever suite of experiments shows that the dark hand of predation extends all the way from altering what prey eat to the nutrients their decomposing bodies contribute to soil."
Microbes in the soil require a lot of nitrogen to function and to produce the enzymes that break down organic matter.
"It only takes a slight change in the chemical composition of that animal biomass to fundamentally alter how much carbon dioxide the microbial pool is releasing to the atmosphere while it is decomposing plant organic matter," said Schmitz.
"This shows that animals could potentially have huge effects
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| Contact: Cheryl Dybas cdybas@nsf.gov 703-292-7734 National Science Foundation Source:Eurekalert |
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