Sliding down the food web: response to ecosystem change on the Western Antarctic Peninsula,

ROGERS TRACEY. L; CIAGLIA MICHAELA B.; ANDREWS A.; SLIP. DAVID J.; NEGRETE . J; MÁRQUEZ MARÍA E.I.; MENNUCCI J.A; O,CONNELL T.

Auckland

Conferencia; XXXIII SCAR Biennial Meetings and Open Science Conference; 2014

SCAR

Local warming within the Western Antarctic Peninsula (WAP) is causing some of the greatest environmental shifts on the planet. We document a significant trophic downshift at the top of the food web in the 1980s, unprecedented in the last 140 years. The trophic shift of the WAP?s top predator, the leopard seal in concert with changes lower in the food web, suggests that the WAP moved through a regime shift in the 1970-80s and today reflects an alternate stable state.