Legacy effects of developmental stages determine the functional role of predators

Predators are instrumental in structuring natural communities and ecosystem processes. The strong effects of predators are often attributed to their high trophic position in the food web. However, most predators have to grow and move up the food chain before reaching their final trophic position and during this developmental process, their traits, interactions, and abundances change. Here we show that this process of “moving up” the food chain during development strongly determines the ecological role of a predator. By experimentally manipulating the succession of developmental stages of a predatory salamander in seasonal aquatic ecosystem, we found that effects of this apex predator on the ecosystem typically declined with age and size. Furthermore, younger, smaller predator stages had long-lasting effects on community structure and ecosystem function that determined effects of subsequent older, larger stages. Consequently, legacy effects of early stages largely shaped the impact of th...