Unifying elemental stoichiometry and metabolic theory in predicting species abundances

TY - JOUR

T1 - Unifying elemental stoichiometry and metabolic theory in predicting species abundances

AU - Ott, David

AU - Digel, Christoph

AU - Rall, Björn Christian

AU - Maraun, Mark

AU - Scheu, Stefan

AU - Brose, Ulrich

PY - 2014

Y1 - 2014

N2 - While metabolic theory predicts variance in population density within communities depending on population average body masses, the ecological stoichiometry concept relates density variation across communities to varying resource stoichiometry. Using a data set including biomass densities of 4959 populations of soil invertebrates across 48 forest sites we combined these two frameworks. We analyzed how the scaling of biomass densities with population-averaged body masses systematically interacts with stoichiometric variables. Simplified analyses employing either only body masses or only resource stoichiometry are highly context sensitive and yield variable and often misleading results. Our findings provide strong evidence that analyses of ecological state variables should integrate allometric and stoichiometric variables to explain deviations from predicted allometric scaling and avoid erroneous conclusions. In consequence, our study provides an important step towards unifying two prominent ecological theories, metabolic theory and ecological stoichiometry.

AB - While metabolic theory predicts variance in population density within communities depending on population average body masses, the ecological stoichiometry concept relates density variation across communities to varying resource stoichiometry. Using a data set including biomass densities of 4959 populations of soil invertebrates across 48 forest sites we combined these two frameworks. We analyzed how the scaling of biomass densities with population-averaged body masses systematically interacts with stoichiometric variables. Simplified analyses employing either only body masses or only resource stoichiometry are highly context sensitive and yield variable and often misleading results. Our findings provide strong evidence that analyses of ecological state variables should integrate allometric and stoichiometric variables to explain deviations from predicted allometric scaling and avoid erroneous conclusions. In consequence, our study provides an important step towards unifying two prominent ecological theories, metabolic theory and ecological stoichiometry.

KW - Allometric scaling

KW - body mass

KW - leaf litter

KW - population density

KW - soil communities

KW - international

U2 - 10.1111/ele.12330

DO - 10.1111/ele.12330

M3 - Article

SN - 1461-023X

VL - 17

SP - 1247

EP - 1256

JO - Ecology Letters

JF - Ecology Letters

IS - 10

ER -