Fig 1.
A and B refer to the leaf discs from the permanent and intermittent streams, respectively. Each microcosm contained individual shredders and 12 leaf discs. Ten microcosms were used per treatment.
Table 1.
Means ± SEM of the initial chemical leaf litter composition (n = 5) and aquatic hyphomycetes richness (n = 6) and t-tests results for the quality of the leaves in both treatments (A and B).
Table 2.
Results of the indicator species analysis (IndVal), maximum IV significance (IV is the individual value), associated stream class for each species and the frequency of appearance (A and B, permanent and intermittent streams).
Table 3.
Results of one-way ANOVA (factor treatment) of the effects of leaf quality on consumer consumption and growth.
Fig 2.
Shredder consumption and growth.
Total consumption (A), relative consumption rate (RCR) (B); instantaneous growth rate of the head width (IGR) (C); relative growth rate of the head width (RGR) (D); total lipid content (E) and, oxygen consumption (F) of P. latipennis, where t1 = 100% A, t2 = 100% B, t3 = 50% A and 50% B, t4 = 75% A and 25% B and t5 = 25% A and 75% B. The different letters indicate significant differences (Tukey HSD post hoc test, p< 0.05) among treatments for each variable.
Fig 3.
The observed consumption (black bars) of A leaf discs compared with the expected consumption (grey bars).
The expected A leaf discs as the initial proportion of A discs at each treatment: t3 = 50%, t4 = 75% and t5 = 25%). N = 5 (t3, t4) and N = 4 (t5).