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Monday, May 26, 2008 - 4:30 PM
121
Secondary production as part of bioenergetic theory - contributions from freshwater benthic science
Arthur C. Benke, Department of Biological Sciences, The University of Alabama, Box 870206, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
Over the past several decades animal secondary production has probably been the most studied of variables forming bioenergetic theory. Although the basic methodology for estimating secondary production arose from marine studies almost a century ago, similar methods and modifications of methods have developed independently in fresh water, marine, and terrestrial work. Freshwater benthic work in particular has helped pave the way in applying secondary production analysis to a wide variety of ecological questions. Because secondary production (rather than density or biomass) is a comprehensive response variable as well as a direct measure of ecological function it has been increasingly used in fresh waters to quantify responses to food/habitat availability, predation, pollution, invasive species, and other factors. Several recent freshwater studies have demonstrated how production can be the foundation for estimating energy and material fluxes between populations or functional groups within food webs. Application of production analysis to such a diversity of ecological questions has appeared to a lesser extent in the marine literature, and even less in the terrestrial literature. In spite of many hundreds of publications on secondary production, however, its usefulness has yet to be realized in the general ecological literature and in most ecology texts.
Web Page: bioenergetics, secondary production, benthic invertebrates