| In linear food chains, resource and predator control produce positive and negative correlations, respectively, between biomass at adjacent trophic levels. These simple relationships become more complex in food webs that contain alternative food chains of unequal lengths. We have used a “minimum” model for the microbial part of the pelagic food web that has three such food chains connecting free mineral nutrients to copepods: via diatoms, autotrophic flagellates, and heterotrophic bacteria. Trophic cascades from copepods strongly modulates the balance between the three pathways and, therefore, the functionality of the microbial food web in services such as food production for higher trophic levels, DOM degradation, and ocean carbon sequestration. The result... |
