Coupling of green and brown food webs and ecosystem stability

Abstract

Ecosystems comprise living organisms and organic matter or detritus. In earlier community ecology theories, ecosystem dynamics were normally understood in terms of aboveground, green-world trophic interaction networks, or food webs. Recently, there has been growing interest in the role played in ecosystem dynamics by detritus in underground, brown-world interactions. However, the role of decomposers in the consumption of detritus to produce nutrients in ecosystem dynamics remains unclear. Here, an ecosystem model of trophic food chains, detritus, decomposers, and decomposer predators demonstrated that decomposers play a totally different role than that previously predicted, with regard to their relationship between nutrient cycling and ecosystem stability. The high flux of nutrients due to efficient decomposition by decomposers increases ecosystem stability. However, moderate levels of ecosystem openness (with movement of materials) can either greatly increase or decrease ecosystem stability. Furthermore, the stability of an ecosystem peaks at intermediate openness because open systems are less stable than closed systems. These findings suggest that decomposers and the food-web dynamics of brown-world interactions are crucial for ecosystem stability, and that the properties of decomposition rate and openness are important in predicting changes in ecosystem stability in response to changes in decomposition efficiency driven by climate change.