DynaCom:Synthesis

Integrating Multitrophic Salt-Marsh Networks Across Scales
 

Salt marsh ecosystems are shaped by steep environmental gradients, especially salinity and frequency of tidal flooding. These conditions make them ideal natural laboratories for studying how bottom-up and top-down forces influence ecological communities. In recent years, they have also become key systems for exploring how above- and belowground organisms interact, and how these interaction networks respond to environmental disturbances.
Research from earlier DynaCom phases has already revealed how multitrophic networks in salt marshes change under different disturbance regimes. 

DynaCom:Synthesis will integrate these findings into a comprehensive picture of how organisms, their traits, and entire metacommunities respond to environmental change. A central focus lies on interactions that cross ecosystem boundaries, such as links between terrestrial and marine zones or between above- and below-ground communities, and how these connections shift across spatial scales.

In DynaCom:Synthesis, we will combine multiple datasets collected during phases 1 and 2 to generate new insights into salt-marsh food-web structure across the full DynaCom time series. This includes examining how strong abiotic gradients of salinity and inundation frequency shape ecological networks along the marine–terrestrial transition zone. We will compare multitrophic interactions across spatial and geographic scales and integrate additional external datasets. This broader perspective will allow us to test and refine ecological theory, including the equilibrium theory of island biogeography and metacommunity concepts.