Monday, June 4, 2007 - 2:30 PM
21

Applications of secondary production analysis in ecological studies of streams

Arthur C. Benke and Alexander D. Huryn. Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Alabama, Box 870206, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487

Secondary production is basically the biomass growth of individual animals through time in a population or community context and is as fundamental to ecology as population birth and mortality rates.  Early studies of stream invertebrate secondary production were often done to compare the importance of related species in a single system or of a single species in multiple systems.  Relationships were also shown between production and life history features, latitude, or temperature.  In rarer cases, production of entire invertebrate assemblages was assessed in different types of streams or in different habitats.  Additional approaches allow production analysis to help answer a wider array of ecological questions.  These include estimation of energy and nutrient fluxes, production of functional groups along the river continuum or among different habitats, relationships between biodiversity and ecosystem function (production), community predator-prey relationships, interspecific competition, short-term or long-term affects of land use changes or pollution, quantitative food webs, community resilience and succession, and factors controlling production and nutrient fluxes.  In other words, production can be used to quantify ecological fluxes or be used as a response variable in ecological experiments.  Several examples of these applications will be discussed from both published and ongoing studies.