Research in a wide variety of ecosystems has shown that community structure and trophic interactions are important determinants of ecosystem function. Yet, due to an historical ecological paradigm emphasizing bottom-up control in wetlands, few studies have evaluated the importance of top-down effects in maintaining ecosystem processes.
My Ph.D. research focused on a macroinvertebrate food-web in New England coastal salt marshes and was the first study to manipulate trophic structure to evaluate the associated effects on biomass production and soil properties (Moore 2018, PLoS one). I found that community structure influenced biomass, soil organic matter content, and soil nitrogen content, and that these effects were highly context-dependent; changes observed at one study site were not necessarily observed at another.
This study adds to growing literature indicating a need to evaluate wetland systems holistically, focusing not only the abiotic and biological drivers of change, but also the contexts in which these changes occur.