Figure legends
Figure 1: Experimental design. We manipulated relative patch size to study its effect on the spatial coupling between autotrophic and heterotrophic ecosystems in experimental protist two-patch meta-ecosystems. Capital letters describe patch size and type: S = small patch, M = medium patch, L = large patch, A = autotrophic patch, H = heterotrophic patch. The subscript indicates the size and trophic type of the connected patch. The disturbed part of the respective system is indicated with a lightning bolt. This part of the patch was heated to turn living biomass into detritus and then used for bi-directional resource flow or retained, respectively, in the connected vs. unconnected meta-ecosystems. Each treatment was replicated five times, resulting in 60 patches.
Figure 2: Time series of meta-ecosystem protist total biomass. For connected meta-ecosystems, dots indicate means across replicates. For unconnected meta-ecosystems, dots indicate the mean of possible combinations of unconnected ecosystems, assembled as unconnected meta-ecosystems. Error bars indicate 95 % confidence intervals; vertical grey lines indicate disturbance events that were followed by resource flows. Points are slightly jittered along the x-axis to improve the clarity of the figure. The area in grey encompasses the time points that were not considered for analysis, as meta-ecosystems at these time points were sampled before the first disturbance and resource flow event.
Figure 3: Time series of local level protist biomass density and effects of the connection via resource flows on local patches in autotrophic-, equally-, and heterotrophic-dominated connected meta-ecosystems, respectively. Dots represent means across replicates. Error bars indicate 95 % confidence intervals; vertical grey lines indicate disturbance events which were followed by resource flows. Points are slightly jittered along the x-axis to improve the clarity of the figure. The area in grey encompasses the time points that were not considered for analysis, as patches at these time points were sampled before the first disturbance and resource flow.