Aboveground consumers are believed to affect ecosystem functioning by regulating the quantity and quality of plant litter entering the soil. We uncovered a pathway whereby terrestrial predators regulate ecosystem processes via indirect control over soil community function. Grasshopper herbivores stressed by spider predators have a higher body carbon-to-nitrogen ratio than do grasshoppers raised without spiders. This change in elemental content does not slow grasshopper decomposition but perturbs belowground community function, decelerating the subsequent decomposition of plant litter. This legacy effect of predation on soil community function appears to be regulated by the amount of herbivore protein entering the soil.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 91. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 February 2018.
All research outputs
#563,499
of 32,013,898 outputs
Outputs from Science
#12,806
of 91,741 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#2,395
of 204,463 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Science
#55
of 830 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 32,013,898 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 91,741 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 65.9. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 204,463 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 830 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 93% of its contemporaries.
