South West Atlantic salt marshes as model systems for community and ecosystem ecology

DALEO, PEDRO; ALBERTI, JUAN; MONTEMAYOR, DIANA I.; GIORGINI, MICAELA; BOTTO, FLORENCIA; PASCUAL, JESÚS; ROCCA, CAMILA; IRIBARNE, OSCAR

ECOLOGÍA AUSTRAL

ASOCIACIÓN ARGENTINA DE ECOLOGÍA

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2022 vol. 32 p. 806 - 820

0327-5477

Just as somespecies are used as model systems in organismal biology (e.g.,physiology, genetics), many ecosystems are commonly used as modelsystems in ecology. Salt marshes, for instance, are great models toperform manipulative field experiments, and thus, were historicallyused to understand the drivers of community and ecosystem function.Decades of experimental work, indeed, made a strong contribution tocommunity ecology as a discipline, but most of the emerged hypothesesand models were grounded in a few sites. When studies from new sitescame onboard, looking to enlarge generalities, their resultschallenged the prevailing ideas. Here, we review more than 25 yearsof intense experimentation in South West Atlantic salt marshes, whichhelped not only to increase the knowledge about salt marshfunctioning, but also to expand this knowledge beyond salt marsheshelping to refine community and ecosystem function theory. We showthat results coming from SW Atlantic marshes significantly contributeto understand 1) the separate and interactive effect of biotic andabiotic stress for species distribution and even for ecosystemstability, 2) the integrated role of species that can function asecosystem engineers and as consumers, 3) the balance betweenstochastic and deterministic forces as drivers of communitystructure, and 4) the regulation of cross-ecosystem fluxes.Nevertheless, we believe SW Atlantic salt marshes still have a lotmore to offer, not only as conceptual models that help satisfy ourintellectual curiosity, but also as key ecosystems that providevaluable benefits to our societies.p { line-height: 115%; margin-bottom: 0.1in; background: transparent }