Converting between ecological currencies

Highlights

Effects of organisms beyond resource consumption are vital to explaining ecosystem function and structure.

Proposed concepts to organize and understand these effects include trait-mediated indirect interactions and ecosystem engineering, but their integration is non-trivial.

Many of these effects can be inter-related by focusing on how matter can act as energy, material and/or information, the currencies of ecological interactions, and therefore act as both a resource and a non-resource depending on the context.

We show how converting between these three currencies can be achieved, especially if the effects captured by these currencies are mediated by concentrations of matter.

Our framework shows that the joint resource and non-resource effects of matter be considered to understand the structure and function of our human-impacted ecosystems.