My feeling is that the amount of decomposition attributable to shredders is less in lentic habitats, but I don't have much supporting evidence.
I send you attached a paper that considers leaf litter decomposition in running stream and isolated pools, in a temporary Mediterranean
stream during flow fragmentation if it is of your interest
Regards
Margarita
Hi Scott. Here are some citations that are not exactly what you want, but might help you get there. I think Darold's work addresses this in terms of shredder density/biomass, but not decomp specifically. Hope all is well, pop.
Batzer, Darold P., and Scott A. Wissinger. "Ecology of insect communities in nontidal wetlands." Annual review of entomology 41.1 (1996): 75-100.
Batzer, Darold P., Brian J. Palik, and Richard Buech. "Relationships between environmental characteristics and macroinvertebrate communities in seasonal woodland ponds of Minnesota." Journal of the North American Benthological Society 23.1 (2004): 50-68.
Reese, Elizabeth G., and Darold P. Batzer. "Do invertebrate communities in floodplains change predictably along a river's length?." Freshwater Biology 52.2 (2007): 226-239.
Kratzer, Erika B., and Darold P. Batzer. "Spatial and temporal variation in aquatic macroinvertebrates in the Okefenokee Swamp, Georgia, USA." Wetlands 27.1 (2007): 127-140.
Researched this awhile ago and came up with almost nothing. Batzer's work is the closest I came. I actually did some pilot work comparing leaf decomposition of the same species in lentic and lotic habitats for the same period of time, same time of the year, etc...turns out litter decomposition in streams and wetlands were about the same...
The subsurface may not correspond to the classical riffle - pool sequence you were thinking of, but the Niphargus paper might be of interest to you. The net decomposition that you measure might also depend on whether and what types of predators are present since shredders are of course preyed upon - even if found to be selected negatively compared to other taxa (see attached link on selective predation) - , but whatever they decomposed may be carried out of the system by their predators.
Article The shredding activity of gammarids facilitates the processi...
Article Selective predation by benthivorous fish on stream macroinve...
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