Joint effects of nutrients and contaminants on the dynamics of a food chain in marine ecosystems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nutrients and contaminants jointly influence marine food chain dynamics, revealing that pollutants delay complex state transitions and disproportionately affect top predators through indirect effects.

Contribution

It introduces a bifurcation analysis approach to study combined effects of nutrients and contaminants on marine food chains, highlighting indirect impacts on top predators.

Findings

Pollutants delay transitions to complex dynamical states.

Contaminants disproportionately affect top predators.

Indirect effects can lead to counterintuitive ecological outcomes.

Abstract

We analyze the joint effect of contaminants and nutrient loading on population dynamics of marine food chains by means of bifurcation analysis. Contaminant toxicity is assumed to alter mortality of some species with a sigmoidal dose-response relationship. A generic effect of pollutants is to delay transitions to complex dynamical states towards higher nutrient load values, but more counterintuitive consequences arising from indirect effects are described. In particular, the top predator seems to be the species more affected by pollutants, even when contaminant is toxic only to lower trophic levels.