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The role of mobile consumers in lake nutrient cycles: a brief review

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Abstract

We summarise current understanding of consumer recycling in lake nutrient cycles and expand on it by integrating emerging knowledge from food web ecology. The role of consumer nutrient recycling (CNR) is initially framed in the wider context of lake nutrient cycling, which includes hydrodynamic and biogeochemical processes, and their responses to global environmental change. Case studies are used to demonstrate that effects of CNR on lake ecosystems range widely, from reduced nutrient cycling rates to exacerbation of eutrophication. CNR depends on consumer biomass, body size and diet, remaining relatively consistent through the year and becoming important as other fluxes seasonally ebb. Universal patterns in food web structure, for example, consumer–resource biomass ratios, body size scaling and relationships between trophic level and diet breadth, are used to demonstrate the predictability of CNR effects. Larger, mobile, top predators excrete nutrients at a lower rate but over a wider range, linking nutrient cycles across habitats. Smaller-bodied, lower trophic level consumers have strong localised nutrient cycling effects associated with their limited mobility. Global environmental-change drivers that alter food web structure are likely to have the greatest impact on CNR rates and should direct future studies.

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Acknowledgements

Mark McCarthy and two anonymous reviewers provided helpful comments that improved on an earlier draft of this manuscript. SS was funded by a Ph.D. scholarship from the Advocates for the Tongariro River. SDS, DPH, PV and ICD were assisted by funding from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment for Enhancing the Health and Resilience of New Zealand Lakes (UOWX1503). WTB was supported by NZ funding to GNS Science (GCT84 and GWR43).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science, University of Waikato, Hamilton, 3225, New Zealand

    Simon D. Stewart, David P. Hamilton & Ian C. Duggan

  2. Rivers Institute, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia

    David P. Hamilton

  3. National Isotope Centre, GNS Science, Lower Hutt, 5010, New Zealand

    W. Troy Baisden

  4. NIWA Ltd, Gate 9 Silverdale Rd, Hamilton, 3225, New Zealand

    Piet Verburg

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Correspondence to Simon D. Stewart.

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Stewart, S.D., Hamilton, D.P., Baisden, W.T. et al. The role of mobile consumers in lake nutrient cycles: a brief review. Hydrobiologia 818, 11–29 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-018-3603-2

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