Cross-Ecosystem Resource Subsidies: From Land to Water and Back Again

We now appreciate the importance of flows of energy sources across ecosystem boundaries, such as leaf litter inputs to fresh waters, terrestrial invertebrates into streams, aquatic insects and salmon to terrestrial consumers.  Fishes are often the top consumer benefiting from such subsidies, regardless of the trophic level at which the subsidies enter the system, and sometimes returning anadromous fishes are the source of the subsidy. However, in most cases the quantitative contributions of these subsidies to individual growth rates and population consequences have not been clearly identified.  Moreover, theory suggests possibility of stabilizing or destabilizing consequences for recipient communities depending the timing and magnitudes of subsidies relative to the main consumer’s life cycle and growth periods. This symposium will explore the ecological and quantitative outcomes from cross-ecosystem resource subsidies on recipient consumer populations (freshwater or terrestrial) and influence on communities, including manipulative and descriptive works that consider gradients of subsidy fluxes.