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According to apparent competition theory, sharing a predator should cause indirect interactions among prey that can affect the structure and the dynamics of natural communities.Though shifts in prey dominance and predator resource use along environmental gradients are rather common, empirical evidence on the role of indirect prey–prey interactions through shared predation particularly with increasing productivity, is still scarce.In an 8‐week lake mesocosm experiment, we manipulated both the addition of inorganic nutrients and the presence of generalist fish predators (crucian carp, Carassius carassius L.), to test for the effects of indirect interactions through shared predation along a productivity gradient.We found that apparent mutualism (indirect positive interaction) between benthic and pelagic prey strongly affected short‐term responses of aquatic food webs to increasing productivity in the presence of a generalist fish. Increasing productivity favoured the relative abundance of benthic prey, following trends in natural productive lake systems. This led to a shift in fish selectivity from pelagic to benthic prey driven by changes in fish behaviour, which resulted in apparent mutualism due to the lower and delayed top‐down control of pelagic prey at increasing productivity.Our results show empirical evidence that the coupling of multiple production pathways can lead to strong indirect interactions through shared predation, whereby prey dynamics on short time‐scales are highly dependent on the foraging behaviour of generalist predators. This mechanism may play an important role in short‐term responses of food webs across environmental gradients., In an aquatic mesocosm study, the authors found that switching foraging in a generalist predator can lead to short‐term apparent mutualism between its benthic and pelagic prey. Such indirect prey–prey interactions had important consequences in prey community dynamics and strongly affected the food web response to increasing productivity.

Food webs are networks of organisms linked by trophic interactions that regulate the responses of ecosystems to environmental change. Such regulation is a result of the effects of resources on the abundance of their consumers (i.e. bottom-up effects) and/or the influence of consumers on the abundance of their resources (i.e. top-down effects). Lake food webs comprise pelagic and benthic production pathways and are largely affected by fluxes of resources from/to adjacent terrestrial ecosystems. These pathways are often coupled by mobile generalist consumers, potentially leading to indirect interactions among prey that arise when sharing a predator. In contrast, consumers can also undergo resource specialization that restricts their ability to couple resources at a given time. In this thesis, I observed that top-down control of predators on benthic and pelagic prey at increasing productivity was highly dependent on apparent mutualism that was driven by switching behaviour of generalist fish. That, in addition to bottom-up responses of benthic pathways at increasing productivity, had important consequences for the fluxes of energy and high quality polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) to terrestrial systems via insect emergence. I also found that PUFAs were highly regulated over the ontogeny of Eurasian perch (Perca fluviatilis). Mismatches with PUFA composition in prey may in turn affect resource specialization and the timing of ontogenetic diet shifts, altering the role of perch in the food web. Finally, browning, which is a phenomenon affecting many temperate and boreal lakes, did not affect bottom-up and top-down control in open-water lake food webs. Instead, browning affected prey selectivity, probably changing the pathways of energy transfer within the open-water food web. Overall, this thesis demonstrates that predictions of food web responses in lake ecosystems and their exports to adjacent terrestrial systems depend on the coupling of different pathways and subsequent indirect interactions among prey through shared predation. This could not be explained by classic food chain theory, but rather by a framework including resource coupling and resource specialization over the ontogeny of consumers. These observations must not be overlooked when constructing a comprehensive model of food webs across time and space.