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Does the stoichiometric carbon:phosphorus knife edge apply for predaceous copepods?

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Abstract

Recent work has indicated that stoichiometric food quality in terms of the carbon:phosphorus (C:P) ratio affects consumers whether the imbalance involves a deficit or an excess of nutrients; hence, organisms exist on a “stoichiometric knife edge”. While previous studies have focused primarily on autotroph–herbivore trophic transfer, nutritional imbalances may also affect the interactions between species at higher trophic levels. Since the foods of carnivores are normally stoichiometrically similar to the body compositions of those carnivores, they may be more severely affected than herbivores if imbalances become pronounced. We analysed the response of the predatory copepod Parabroteas sarsi to monospecific diet treatments consisting of high and low C:P prey items. These dietary treatments strongly affected the predator’s elemental composition and growth, although prey selection, excretion, egestion, and respiration rates were not affected. We suggest that, due to their low threshold elemental ratio and a narrow C:P stoichiometric knife edge, these predators are highly vulnerable to stoichiometric imbalances, whether an excess or a deficit of nutrients is involved. Our results demonstrating this high sensitivity to prey C:P ratio show that the stoichiometric knife edge may apply to not only herbivores but also higher trophic levels. Thus, predators such as P. sarsi, with a much narrower range of food quality, may also be strongly affected by fluctuations in the quality of their prey, with negative consequences for their secondary production.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Fondo Nacional de Ciencia y Técnica PICT 2011-2240, PICT2012-1168 and Universidad Nacional del Comahue B-163. JJE acknowledges the support of the US National Science Foundation (DMS-0920744) and the Fulbright Foundation. We are also grateful to two reviewers and the editor for their constructive comments. CL is a CONICET fellowship and EB and BM are CONICET researchers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratorio de Limnología, INIBIOMA, CONICET-UNComahue, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Quintral 1250, 8400, San Carlos de Bariloche, Río Negro, Argentina

    Cecilia Laspoumaderes, Beatriz Modenutti & Esteban Balseiro

  2. School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, US

    James J. Elser

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  1. Cecilia Laspoumaderes
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  2. Beatriz Modenutti
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  3. James J. Elser
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  4. Esteban Balseiro
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Correspondence to Cecilia Laspoumaderes.

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Communicated by Robert O. Hall.

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Laspoumaderes, C., Modenutti, B., Elser, J.J. et al. Does the stoichiometric carbon:phosphorus knife edge apply for predaceous copepods?. Oecologia 178, 557–569 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-3155-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-014-3155-8

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