Linkages between stream and forest food webs: Shigeru Nakanoʹs legacy for ecology in Japan

During the 1990s, ecologists such as Gary Polis catalysed a renaissance in food-web research by focusing on trophic processes occurring among habitats at the landscape scale. Examples include prey transported across ecotones to subsidize predators in adjacent habitats, which, in turn, can have strong indirect effects such as initiating trophic cascades. Recent work in Japan by Shigeru Nakano and his colleagues has set new standards of holism and rigor in food-web research by demonstrating complementary seasonal shifts in prey fluxes across a stream–forest ecotone that sustain higher densities and diversities of consumers in both habitats than would otherwise be supported in either alone. Although Nakano died in a tragic accident at sea with Polis and three other Japanese and American ecologists in March 2000, his work has left an indelible legacy that gives direction and purpose to further research on the significance of complex interrelationships in food webs across landscape scales.