AUTHOR=Singh Charu Lata , Huggett Megan J. , Lavery Paul S. , Säwström Christin , Hyndes Glenn A. TITLE=Kelp-Associated Microbes Facilitate Spatial Subsidy in a Detrital-Based Food Web in a Shoreline Ecosystem JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science VOLUME=8 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.678222 DOI=10.3389/fmars.2021.678222 ISSN=2296-7745 ABSTRACT=
Microbes are ubiquitous but our knowledge of their effects on consumers is limited in benthic marine systems. Shorelines often form hotspots of microbial and detritivore activity due to the large amounts of detrital macrophytes that are exported from other coastal ecosystems, such as kelp forests, and accumulate in these systems. Shoreline ecosystems therefore provide a useful model system to examine microbial-detritivore interactions. We experimentally test whether bacteria in the biofilm of kelp provide a bottom-up influence on growth and reproductive output of detritivores in shorelines where detrital kelp accumulates, by manipulating the bacterial abundances on kelp (