5.0 - Understanding the mutual relationships between the dynamics of food webs, resources, and nutrients

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that understanding nutrient and resource dynamics requires a much more holistic view. It shows that the role of invertebrates on nutrient dynamics relates to their differential utilization or storage of limited elements in different habitats. Other contributions focus on what seems now the most difficult and diverse ecological systems. Understanding the transfer of nutrients and resources is the heart of food web ecology since its early days. A formal means of dealing with the flow of energy and matter in food webs was ushered in with the advent of systems ecology, and since then the food web approach has been adopted to analyze interrelationships among community structure, stability, and ecosystem processes. Currently, there are still strong boundaries among different approaches to food web analysis, both within and between systems. These differences reflect historical developments rather than being justified by scientific grounds. The multiple links between energy and element pathways above- and belowground, as well as between aquatic and terrestrial food webs have now been convincingly demonstrated.