Energy use and animal abundance in litter and soil communities

• Published in: Ecology (Durham) 2006-07, Vol.87 (7), p.1650-1658
• Main Author: Meehan, Timothy D.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: abundance; ambient temperature; Animal and plant ecology; Animal physiology; Animal, plant and microbial ecology; Animals; arthropods; Biological and medical sciences; body mass; Body size; Body temperature; body weight; carbon; Energy Metabolism; Food Chain; Food chains; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects. Techniques; International Biological Programme; Invertebrates; Invertebrates - physiology; Marine ecology; mathematical models; metabolic scaling theory; Methods and techniques (sampling, tagging, trapping, modelling...); Modeling; Models, Biological; Net primary production; plant litter; Population Dynamics; Population ecology; population size; prediction; primary productivity; Soil; soil arthropods; Soil ecology; Soil invertebrates; Synecology; Temperature; Terrestrial ecosystems; Theory; Trees - physiology; trophic level; Trophic levels; trophic relationships
• ISSN: 0012-9658; 1939-9170
• DOI: 10.1890/0012-9658(2006)87[1650:euaaai]2.0.co;2

Tools from metabolic scaling and food web theory were used to construct a general model of carbon flux by litter and soil invertebrates. The flux model was used to explore the energetic basis of invertebrate abundance and predicted that abundance should (1) scale linearly with net primary production; (2) be related to the body mass of animals as a power function, with an exponent between -0.65 and -0.85; (3) be related to the average body temperature of animals according to the Boltzmann factor, with an activation energy between 0.27 and 0.79 eV; and (4) decrease by a factor of 0.05 to 0.15 across trophic levels due to gross production efficiency of prey. Model predictions were generally supported by a global data set on invertebrate abundance that was amassed during the International Biological Programme, indicating that fundamental energetic principles explain a large degree of variation in invertebrate abundance across the globe.