Fig. 2: Distribution of energy across aboveground and belowground compartments in rainforest and plantation food webs.
From: Rainforest transformation reallocates energy from green to brown food webs
Food-web nodes include basal resources shown in different colours (living plants, green; plant litter, orange; fungi, brown; bacteria, yellow; soil organic matter, grey) and consumers merged into four major groups according to their ecological niches (canopy arthropods, birds, soil arthropods and earthworms). Sizes of consumer nodes are proportional to node biomasses. Connecting lines on the food-web diagram represent average energy fluxes, quantified in mW m−2 (represented by line thickness). Colours of energy fluxes reflect colours of the donor nodes and represent associated ‘trophic functions’: herbivory (on leaves or roots), litter transformation, bacterivory, fungivory, soil transformation and predation. Average trophic functions for each major group of consumers and for the food web in total are summarized as stacked proportional bar charts (n = 8 sites per system). Estimated mean energy fluxes are shown with numbers to the right of the bars; total energy flux (sum of all fluxes) is given as mean ± 1 s.d. Illustrations of a plant seedling, litter, fungi, bacteria, soil organic matter, springtail, earthworm and bird were drawn by S. Meyer.
