Food web restoration lags behind biological communities: a case study from a floodplain wetland

Conservation and restoration of wetlands have become a global priority as awareness of their importance increases. At present, efforts to restore wetlands have primarily focused on enhancing water quality and biodiversity, with little attention paid to analyzing the recovery of the food web. We investigated the differences in food web attributes between natural and restored wetlands in Qingtongxia wetlands on the upper reaches of the Yellow River, China. Our results showed that there were no significant differences in the community structure of aquatic organism (fish, macroinvertebrates, zooplankton, phytoplankton and macrophytes) and water parameters (TP, TN, DO, et al.) between natural and restored wetlands. Restored wetlands had higher total system throughput and primary productivity compared to natural wetlands, which increased the proportion of the detritus food chain in the energy supply. However, energy transfer at the system level was less efficient than in natural wetlands. Indices of cycling, path length and network analysis showed that the restored wetland was less mature but more stable than the natural wetland. Given the inconsistency of food web recovery with water variables and aquatic assemblages, integrating community and food web approaches in future wetland restoration will be critical to refining restoration goals and enhancing conservation efforts.