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Dryad

Periodical cicadas disrupt trophic dynamics via community-level shifts in Avian Foraging

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Oct 19, 2023 version files 56.44 KB

Abstract

Once every 13 or 17 years within eastern North American deciduous forests, billions of periodical cicadas concurrently emerge from the soil and briefly satiate a diverse array of naive consumers, offering a rare opportunity to assess the cascading impacts of an ecosystem-wide resource pulse on a complex food web. Here, we quantify the effects of the 2021 Brood X emergence, and report that >80 bird species opportunistically switched their foraging to include cicadas, releasing herbivorous insects from predation, and essentially doubling both caterpillar densities and accumulated herbivory levels on host oak trees. These short-lived but massive emergence events help us to understand how resource pulses can rewire interaction webs and disrupt energy flows in ecosystems, with potentially long-lasting effects.