Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I The container flora, fauna and environment
- 2 The container flora
- 3 The container fauna
- 4 The phytotelm environment
- Part II Methods and theories
- Part III Patterns in phytotelm food webs
- Part IV Processes structuring food webs
- Part V Synthesis
- Annexe: The phytotelm bestiary
- References
- Index
3 - The container fauna
The animals of phytotelmata
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- Part I The container flora, fauna and environment
- 2 The container flora
- 3 The container fauna
- 4 The phytotelm environment
- Part II Methods and theories
- Part III Patterns in phytotelm food webs
- Part IV Processes structuring food webs
- Part V Synthesis
- Annexe: The phytotelm bestiary
- References
- Index
Summary
The aquatic fauna of phytotelmata ranges from unicellular Protozoa to Amphibia, from rotifers to dragonflies. This chapter focuses on the multicellular organisms most commonly encountered in container habitats. The chapter looks at the fauna on a guild-by-guild basis, leaving a much fuller, taxonomically organised account for the Annexe.
Guilds are sets of species within ecosystems which perform related ecological roles (Root 1967, Simberloff & Dayan 1991). Usually these have been defined in terms of trophic positions within food webs, sometimes modified by the size of the organisms involved (‘small herbivores’, middle-sized predators' etc.). Phytotelms contain allochthonous, detritus-based communities and hence the guilds can be clearly divided into the saprophages, predators and top predators. I use these categories here, variously qualified by the size of the species, the particle size of the detritus they exploit, and, for the predators and top predators, by aspects of their foraging strategy. Of course top predators are likely also to be predators but, to avoid repetition, I assign them to the former category. Additional minor categories encountered rarely in the field and the literature include herbivores and parasitoids.
Whenever an aquatic organism is encountered within a plant container a question is posed.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Food Webs and Container HabitatsThe Natural History and Ecology of Phytotelmata, pp. 43 - 56Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000
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