Study Finds Prey Distribution, Not Biomass, Key to Food Chain

摘要

A study has found that each step of the marine food chain is clearly controlled by the trophic level below it— and the driving factor influencing that relationship is not the abundance of prey but how that prey is distributed. Ocean "patch iness" is not a new concept, but it may have been underappreciated in importance, as scientists are now increasingly using technologies such as sonar and acoustics to study animal behavior patterns, said Kelly Benoit-Bird, lead author of the study, which was published in May in Biology Letters. In the past, ecologists have primarily used biomass to understand the food chain.