CATHERINE M. PRINGLE results 29
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Hurricane disturbance drives trophic changes in neotropical mountain stream food websNARA Subscribed
Food webs are complex ecological networks that reveal species interactions and energy flow in ecosystems. Prevailing ecological knowledge on forested streams suggests that their food webs are based on allochthonous carbon, driven by a constant supply of organic matter from adjacent vegetation and limited primary production due to low light conditions. Extreme climatic disturbances can disrupt these natural ecosystem dynamics b...
NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES : A dataset of occurrence and abundance of freshwater fishes in the NeotropicsNARA Subscribed
The Neotropical region hosts 4225 freshwater fish species, ranking first among the world's most diverse regions for freshwater fishes. Our NEOTROPICAL FRESHWATER FISHES data set is the first to produce a large‐scale Neotropical freshwater fish inventory, covering the entire Neotropical region from Mexico and the Caribbean in the north to the southern limits in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Uruguay. We compiled 185,787 distri...
Mechanisms underlying lack of functional compensation by insect grazers after tadpole declines in a Neotropical streamNARA Subscribed
Resilience of ecosystems to the sudden decline of large‐bodied species is dependent on characteristics of surviving guild members. However, that response may also be mediated by local habitat conditions. Here, we examine the mechanisms behind the observed lack of functional compensation in the algal‐grazing guild by insect grazers following the decline of tadpole grazers in a forested Panamanian stream. We examined: (1) shifts...
Landscape patterns in top‐down control of decomposition: omnivory disrupts a tropical detrital‐based trophic cascadeNARA Subscribed
Detrital‐based trophic cascades are often considered weak or absent in tropical stream ecosystems because of the prevalence of omnivorous macroconsumers and the dearth of leaf‐shredding insects. In this study, we isolate top‐down effects of three macroconsumer species on detrital processing in headwater streams draining Trinidad's northern mountains. We separated effects of different macroconsumers by experimentally manipulati...
Fish introductions and light modulate food web fluxes in tropical streams: a whole‐ecosystem experimental approachNARA Subscribed
Decades of ecological study have demonstrated the importance of top‐down and bottom‐up controls on food webs, yet few studies within this context have quantified the magnitude of energy and material fluxes at the whole‐ecosystem scale. We examined top‐down and bottom‐up effects on food web fluxes using a field experiment that manipulated the presence of a consumer, the Trinidadian guppy Poecilia reticulata , and the production...
Evidence for the persistence of food web structure after amphibian extirpation in a Neotropical streamNARA Subscribed
Species losses are predicted to simplify food web structure, and disease‐driven amphibian declines in Central America offer an opportunity to test this prediction. Assessment of insect community composition, combined with gut content analyses, was used to generate periphyton–insect food webs for a Panamanian stream, both pre‐ and post‐amphibian decline. We then used network analysis to assess the effects of amphibian declines...
We tested whether assemblages of detritivorous chironomid larvae (Chironomidae: Diptera) varied in phosphorus (P) demand based on local nutrient conditions using a series of streams in lowland Costa Rica that exhibit a natural range in ambient dissolved P and detrital P due to inputs of solute‐rich groundwater. Chironomids collected from three high‐P streams had growth rates and P‐excretion rates that were similar to, or lower...
Aim To use molecular data to test for dispersal structuring in the immigration history of an amphidromous community on an island. Location The Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. Methods Mitochondrial DNA sequences were obtained from 11 amphidromous species, including shrimps, fish and a gastropod, sampled from throughout the island. The timing of population expansion ( T E ) in each species was calculated using nucleotide variat...
°Molecular evidence for sequential colonization and taxon cycling in freshwater decapod shrimps on a Caribbean islandNARA Subscribed
Taxon cycling, i.e. sequential phases of expansions and contractions in species’ distributions associated with ecological or morphological shifts, are postulated to characterize dynamic biogeographic histories in various island faunas. The Caribbean freshwater shrimp assemblage is mostly widespread and sympatric throughout the region, although one species (Atyidae: Atya lanipes ) is geographically restricted and ecologically a...
Effects of increased bedload on algal‐ and detrital‐based stream food webs: Experimental manipulation of sediment and macroconsumersNARA Subscribed
Sedimentation poses a significant threat to stream ecosystems throughout the world, and increases in bedload can be especially detrimental to benthic communities. To examine how increased bedload affects algal‐ and detrital based stream communities, we manipulated sediment (via daily sediment addition to 0.25‐m 2 areas of stream bottom) and top‐down effects of macroconsumers (fishes and crayfish, via electric exclusion) in two...
Landscape variation in phosphorus concentration and effects on detritus‐based tropical streamsNARA Subscribed
Landscape‐scale variation in streamwater phosphorus (P) concentration can affect aquatic food webs. Such variation occurs naturally in streams at La Selva Biological Station in Costa Rica due to spatially variable inputs of geothermally modified groundwater. We examined effects of this gradient on detrital food web components at 16 stream sites. The Michaelis‐Menten model provided a good fit of the relationship between soluble...