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Balanced top-down and bottom-up control in coastal planktonic food webs
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DOI：10.3389/fmars.2026.1858560.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
Aquatic food webs are controlled by physical and chemical factors (bottom-up) and by predation (top-down) processes. However; the relative importance of these controls is unclear; which impedes the understanding of ecosystem changes due to climatic or anthropogenic forcing. For example; while high nutrient levels are generally considered to shape coastal ecosystems; sustained or even increasing stocks of primary producers in coastal areas with decreasing nutrient input suggests a weak bottom-up control. To unravel the relevance of bottom-up and top-down regulation; we analyze 15 years of environmental conditions and seven trophic groups in the Wadden Sea; Southern North Sea. We use size- and trait- based feeding theory to aggregate species into trophic groups. Based on a novel explorative; theoretical framework linking causal and statistical relations; we correlate fluctuations of biomass on weekly-monthly and annual time scales. We found signs of bottom-up influences on the community structure and growth of phytoplankton during spring blooms. In late spring and summer; phytoplankton blooms seemed to be terminated by grazing with concurrent elevated concentration of zooplankton. In turn; zooplankton and dinoflagellates appeared to be controlled by their prey and by higher trophic levels. These findings provide an ensemble of possible trophic relationships; and suggest a similar importance of top-down processes compared to bottom-up; both at annual and sub-seasonal scales; which indicate an important link between the ecology of higher trophic levels and the plankton food-web and; ultimately; biogeochemical cycling.
Keywords:
phytoplankton
food web
time series analysis
zooplankton
coastal ecosystem
bottom-up control and top-down control
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