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      Oribatid mite communities in mountain scree: stable isotopes ( 15N, 13C) reveal three trophic levels of exclusively sexual species

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          Abstract

          Mountain scree habitats are intermediate habitats between the base of the soil and the bedrock. They are composed of a network of small cracks and voids, and are commonly situated at the lower levels of scree slopes. Their environment is defined by empty spaces inside the scree, the absence of light and photoperiod, low temperature, and resource poor conditions. Soil arthropod communities, their trophic structure as well as their use of basal resources in mountain scree are little studied despite the fact that they are important components of these systems. Here, we investigate stable isotope ratios ( 15N/ 14N, 13C/ 12C) of oribatid mites (Oribatida, Acari) to understand their trophic niches and their variation with depth (50 and 75 cm) at two mountain scree sites (Cerdacul Stanciului, Marele Grohotis) in the Romanian Carpathians. Further, we used existing data to investigate the reproductive mode of the species in that habitat, as this may be related to resource availability. We hypothesized that trophic niches of oribatid mites will not differ between the two mountain scree regions but will be affected by depth. We furthermore hypothesized that due to the resource poor conditions oribatid mite species will span a narrow range of trophic levels, and that species are sexual rather than parthenogenetic. Our results showed that (1) oribatid mite trophic structure only slightly differed between the two sites indicating that the trophic ecology of oribatid mites in scree habitats is consistent and predictable, (2) oribatid mite trophic structure did not differ between the two studied soil depths indicating that the structure and availability of resources that were used by oribatid mites in deeper scree habitats varies little with depth, (3) oribatid mite species spanned only three trophic levels indicating that the habitat is rather resource poor, and (4) that all studied oribatid mite species were sexual supporting the view that resource poor conditions favour sexual reproduction.

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          TOWARD A METABOLIC THEORY OF ECOLOGY

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            USING STABLE ISOTOPES TO ESTIMATE TROPHIC POSITION: MODELS, METHODS, AND ASSUMPTIONS

            David Post (2002)
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              Isotopic ecology ten years after a call for more laboratory experiments.

              About 10 years ago, reviews of the use of stable isotopes in animal ecology predicted explosive growth in this field and called for laboratory experiments to provide a mechanistic foundation to this growth. They identified four major areas of inquiry: (1) the dynamics of isotopic incorporation, (2) mixing models, (3) the problem of routing, and (4) trophic discrimination factors. Because these areas remain central to isotopic ecology, we use them as organising foci to review the experimental results that isotopic ecologists have collected in the intervening 10 years since the call for laboratory experiments. We also review the models that have been built to explain and organise experimental results in these areas.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                mmaraun@gwdg.de
                Journal
                Exp Appl Acarol
                Exp Appl Acarol
                Experimental & Applied Acarology
                Springer International Publishing (Cham )
                0168-8162
                1572-9702
                1 March 2021
                1 March 2021
                2021
                : 83
                : 3
                : 375-386
                Affiliations
                [1 ]GRID grid.501624.4, ISNI 0000 0001 2260 1489, Emil Racoviță Institute of Speleology of Romanian Academy, ; 13 Septembrie Road, No. 13, 050711 Bucharest, Romania
                [2 ]GRID grid.7450.6, ISNI 0000 0001 2364 4210, J.F. Blumenbach Institute of Zoology and Anthropology, Animal Ecology, , University of Gӧttingen, ; Untere Karspüle 2, 37073 Gӧttingen, Germany
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2736-8548
                Article
                597
                10.1007/s10493-021-00597-4
                7940297
                33646483
                c0f35ceb-9d7c-4f2f-a930-d3932678b245
                © The Author(s) 2021

                Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 14 January 2021
                : 13 February 2021
                Funding
                Funded by: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (1018)
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                © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

                Entomology
                stable isotopes,oribatid mites,trophic level,carpathians,romania
                Entomology
                stable isotopes, oribatid mites, trophic level, carpathians, romania

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