Niche Partitioning Increases Resource Exploitation by Diverse Communities

Classical ecological theory suggests that the coexistence of consumer species is fostered by resource-use differences, leading to greater resource use in communities with more species. However, explicit empirical support for this idea is lacking, because resource use by species is generally confound...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2008-09, Vol.321 (5895), p.1488-1490
Main Authors: Finke, Deborah L, Snyder, William E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Animals
Aphids - parasitology
Aphids - physiology
Biodiversity
Biological and medical sciences
Communities
Consumer behavior
Ecology
Ecosystem
Feeding Behavior
Female
Food supply
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Host-Parasite Interactions
Natural resources
Niche differentiation
Oviposition
Parasite hosts
Parasitism
Parasitoids
Raphanus - parasitology
Raphanus - physiology
Resource utilization
Species
Species diversity
Synecology
Terrestrial ecosystems
Theory
Wasps - physiology
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Summary:Classical ecological theory suggests that the coexistence of consumer species is fostered by resource-use differences, leading to greater resource use in communities with more species. However, explicit empirical support for this idea is lacking, because resource use by species is generally confounded with other species-specific attributes. We overcame this obstacle by co-opting behavioral plasticity in food choice among a group of animal consumers, allowing us to manipulate patterns of resource use while controlling for the effects of species identity and diversity. Within an aphid-parasitoid-radish community, we created a fully factorial manipulation of consumer resource-use breadth (specialist versus generalist) and species diversity (one versus three species) and found that resource exploitation improved with greater specialist, but not generalist, diversity. Therefore, resource partitioning, and not diversity per se, fostered greater overall resource consumption in our multispecies consumer communities.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1160854