Trait-mediated indirect interactions in ecological communities SPECIAL FEATURE: PREFACE

摘要

Understanding of how trophic linkages make up ecological communities has been one of the most important ecological issues over several decades (Hairston et al. 1960; Paine 1980; Polis and Winemiller 1996; Berlow et al. 2004). An ecological community of interacting species has been conceptualized as a food web in which species are linked through direct trophic interactions between predators and their prey (Polis and Winemiller 1996). Historically, ecologists have been concerned with direct and indirect interactions in which one species changes the density of another species due to consumption (Abrams et al. 1996; Preisser et al. 2005; Werner and Peacor 2006). The consumptive and lethal effects of predators have been commonly viewed as the principal mechanisms regulating prey density and indirectly influencing other species through density-mediated indirect effects (Hairston et al. 1960; Holt 1977; Paine 1980; Carpenter et al. 1985). However, more recently, researchers have recognized that in numerous systems, consumers are important for population and community dynamics not only because they eat prey species, but also because they can induce morphological, physiological, behavioral, and life-history changes in the species that they interact with (Karban and Baldwin 1997; Werner and Peacor 2003; Miner et al. 2005; Ohgushi 2005; Ohgushi et al. 2007; Kishida et al. 2010).