Linking the fundamental and realized niches in ahypersaline consumer-resource system

Intrinsic growth of Dunaliella, brine-shrimp survival, and per-capita grazing rate all vary with salinity and algal strain in a hypersaline consumer-resource system.

• Why it matters: Abiotic change can shift fitness both by tolerance (fundamental niche) and by altering interactions (realized niche), yet few studies test how each species’ intrinsic performance covaries with interaction strength along gradients.
• What they did: Four Dunaliella strains were grown across salinities spanning just below to much above seawater, with or without Artemia franciscana; time-series population sizes and grazer survival were used to fit Lotka–Volterra parameters.
• The result: Salinity and strain drove demographic parameters, with significant strain-by-salinity interactions indicating evolvable responses; correlated demographic parameters across salinity suggest predation may shape salinity tolerance curves, blurring fundamental versus realized niches.

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