Trophic relationships and food webs of the benthic invertebrate fauna of two aseasonal tropical streams on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe trophic ecology of Konaino Creek, a small mountain headwater stream draining rainforest in the aseasonal tropics on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea, was examined and a food web was constructed. The major source of energy in Konaiano Creek was allochthonous detritus, most of which had been terrestrially degraded to fine particulate organic matter rather than entering the stream as leaf litter. This fine detritus was collected by the filter-feeders (mostly Simuliidae and also Hydropsychidae) which formed the dominant functional feeding group (64.4% of the fauna). Thus filterers processed most of the allochthonous detritus and made the energy available to other trophic levels, rather than shredders (1.7% of the fauna) which perform this role in temperate headwater streams. Collector-gatherers made up 22.7% of the fauna, carnivorses, mostly Odonata, Decapoda (crabs) and Hydrobiosidae, comprised 2.8% of the fauna and grazer-scrapers made up 7.4%. The latter were inhibited by low instream production owing to heavy shading and the instability and abrasion of the substrate due to frequent spates. In comparison, the trophic ecology of the nearby, coastal, Bovo River (with a catchment mainly in rainforest but mostly cleared with introduced species at the study site) was quite different and it was dominated by collector-gatherers (74%) and grazer-scrapers (15%).