Flow is more Important than Temperature in Driving Patterns of Organic Matter Storage and Stoichiometry in Stream Ecosys
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Flow is more Important than Temperature in Driving Patterns of Organic Matter Storage and Stoichiometry in Stream Ecosystems James R. Junker,1,7* Wyatt F. Cross,1 Jonathan P. Benstead,2 Alexander D. Huryn,2 James M. Hood,3 Daniel Nelson,4 ´ lafsson6 Gı´sli M. Gı´slason,5 and Jo´n S. O 1
Department of Ecology, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana 59717, USA; 2Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487, USA; 3The Aquatic Ecology Laboratory, Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, Translational Data Analytics Institute, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43212, USA; 4Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019, USA; 5Institute of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavı´k, Iceland; 6Institute of Marine and Freshwater Fisheries, Reykjavı´k, Iceland; 7Present address: Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium, 8124 LA-56, Chauvin, Louisiana 70344, USA
ABSTRACT Understanding the connections between biological communities and elemental cycles is increasingly important given that alterations to both are occurring on a global scale. Biological control of elemental cycles is tied to patterns of biomass and the elemental stoichiometry of organisms and organic matter (OM) pools that comprise ecosystems. The structure and size of these ecosystem components are, in turn, shaped by key environmental factors that influence species composition, functional traits, and OM and element storage. In
Received 30 April 2020; accepted 30 October 2020
Electronic supplementary material: The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-020-00585-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Author contributions: WFC, JPB, ADH, JMH, and JRJ conceived the study, all authors helped with study design, GMG and JSO provided field support and local arrangements, all authors contributed to data collection, JRJ performed analyses and wrote the first draft of the manuscript, and all authors provided input on further manuscript drafts. *Corresponding author; e-mail: [email protected]
stream and river ecosystems, temperature and flow regime have a strong influence on ecosystem structure and function, yet little is known about their relative importance in driving patterns of ecosystem OM and stoichiometry. We quantified ecosystem OM pools and elemental stoichiometry in 11 Icelandic streams across a wide gradient of temperature ( 5 to 25 C) and flow. Across these environmental gradients, we observed two orders of magnitude variation in ecosystem OM mass, as well as relatively large variation in certain ecosystem stoichiometries (that is, C:N, C:P). We found that flow regime was more important than temperature in driving variation in OM pools and stoichiometry because of large shifts in community structure, that is, from dominance by large-bodied macrophyte and bryophyte communities to epilithic and detrital OM pools. Although temperature is known to influence mass-specific rate
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