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Neo D Martinez - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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compilation and network analyses of cambrian Food Webs
PLOS Biology, 2008Co-Authors: Jennifer A Dunne, Neo D Martinez, Richard J. Williams, Rachel Wood, Douglas H ErwinAbstract:A rich body of empirically grounded theory has developed about Food Webs—the networks of feeding relationships among species within habitats. However, detailed Food-web data and analyses are lacking for ancient ecosystems, largely because of the low resolution of taxa coupled with uncertain and incomplete information about feeding interactions. These impediments appear insurmountable for most fossil assemblages; however, a few assemblages with excellent soft-body preservation across trophic levels are candidates for Food-web data compilation and topological analysis. Here we present plausible, detailed Food Webs for the Chengjiang and Burgess Shale assemblages from the Cambrian Period. Analyses of degree distributions and other structural network properties, including sensitivity analyses of the effects of uncertainty associated with Cambrian diet designations, suggest that these early Paleozoic communities share remarkably similar topology with modern Food Webs. Observed regularities reflect a systematic dependence of structure on the numbers of taxa and links in a web. Most aspects of Cambrian Food-web structure are well-characterized by a simple “niche model,” which was developed for modern Food Webs and takes into account this scale dependence. However, a few aspects of topology differ between the ancient and recent Webs: longer path lengths between species and more species in feeding loops in the earlier Chengjiang web, and higher variability in the number of links per species for both Cambrian Webs. Our results are relatively insensitive to the exclusion of low-certainty or random links. The many similarities between Cambrian and recent Food Webs point toward surprisingly strong and enduring constraints on the organization of complex feeding interactions among metazoan species. The few differences could reflect a transition to more strongly integrated and constrained trophic organization within ecosystems following the rapid diversification of species, body plans, and trophic roles during the Cambrian radiation. More research is needed to explore the generality of Food-web structure through deep time and across habitats, especially to investigate potential mechanisms that could give rise to similar structure, as well as any differences.
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allometric scaling enhances stability in complex Food Webs
Ecology Letters, 2006Co-Authors: Ulrich Brose, Richard J. Williams, Neo D MartinezAbstract:Classic local stability theory predicts that complex ecological networks are unstable and are unlikely to persist despite empiricists' abundant documentation of such complexity in nature. This contradiction has puzzled biologists for decades. While some have explored how stability may be achieved in small modules of a few interacting species, rigorous demonstrations of how large complex and ecologically realistic networks dynamically persist remain scarce and inadequately understood. Here, we help fill this void by combining structural models of complex Food Webs with nonlinear bioenergetic models of population dynamics parameterized by biological rates that are allometrically scaled to populations' average body masses. Increasing predator-prey body mass ratios increase population persistence up to a saturation level that is reached by invertebrate and ectotherm vertebrate predators when being 10 or 100 times larger than their prey respectively. These values are corroborated by empirical predator-prey body mass ratios from a global data base. Moreover, negative effects of diversity (i.e. species richness) on stability (i.e. population persistence) become neutral or positive relationships at these empirical ratios. These results demonstrate that the predator-prey body mass ratios found in nature may be key to enabling persistence of populations in complex Food Webs and stabilizing the diversity of natural ecosystems.
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network structure and robustness of marine Food Webs
Marine Ecology Progress Series, 2004Co-Authors: Neo D Martinez, Richard J. Williams, Jennifer A DunneAbstract:Previous studies suggest that Food-web theory has yet to account for major differences in Food-web properties of marine versus other types of ecosystems. We examined this issue by ana- lyzing the network structure of Food Webs for the Northeast US Shelf, a Caribbean reef, and Benguela, off South Africa. The values of connectance (links per species 2 ), link density (links per spe- cies), mean chain length, and fractions of intermediate, omnivorous, and cannibalistic taxa of these marine Webs are somewhat high but still within the ranges observed in other Webs. We further com- pared the marine Webs by using the empirically corroborated 'niche model' that accounts for observed variation in diversity (taxon number) and complexity (connectance). Our results substanti- ate previously reported results for estuarine, fresh-water, and terrestrial datasets, which suggests that Food Webs from different types of ecosystems with variable diversity and complexity share fun- damental structural and ordering characteristics. Analyses of potential secondary extinctions result- ing from species loss show that the structural robustness of marine Food Webs is also consistent with trends from other Food Webs. As expected, given their relatively high connectance, marine Food Webs appear fairly robust to loss of most-connected taxa as well as random taxa. Still, the short average path length between marine taxa (1.6 links) suggests that effects from perturbations, such as over- fishing, can be transmitted more widely throughout marine ecosystems than previously appreciated.
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limits to trophic levels and omnivory in complex Food Webs theory and data
The American Naturalist, 2004Co-Authors: Richard J. Williams, Neo D MartinezAbstract:Abstract: While trophic levels have found broad application throughout ecology, they are also in much contention on analytical and empirical grounds. Here, we use a new generation of data and theory to examine long‐standing questions about trophic‐level limits and degrees of omnivory. The data include Food Webs of the Chesapeake Bay, U.S.A., the island of Saint Martin, a U.K. grassland, and a Florida seagrass community, which appear to be the most trophically complete Food Webs available in the primary literature due to their inclusion of autotrophs and empirically derived estimates of the relative energetic contributions of each trophic link. We show that most (54%) of the 212 species in the four Food Webs can be unambiguously assigned to a discrete trophic level. Omnivory among the remaining species appears to be quite limited, as judged by the standard deviation of omnivores’ energy‐weighted Food‐chain lengths. This allows simple algorithms based on binary Food Webs without energetic details to yield s...
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two degrees of separation in complex Food Webs
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2002Co-Authors: Richard J. Williams, Jennifer A Dunne, Eric L Berlow, Albertlaszlo Barabasi, Neo D MartinezAbstract:Feeding relationships can cause invasions, extirpations, and population fluctuations of a species to dramatically affect other species within a variety of natural habitats. Empirical evidence suggests that such strong effects rarely propagate through Food Webs more than three links away from the initial perturbation. However, the size of these spheres of potential influence within complex communities is generally unknown. Here, we show for that species within large communities from a variety of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are on average two links apart, with >95% of species typically within three links of each other. Species are drawn even closer as network complexity and, more unexpectedly, species richness increase. Our findings are based on seven of the largest and most complex Food Webs available as well as a Food-web model that extends the generality of the empirical results. These results indicate that the dynamics of species within ecosystems may be more highly interconnected and that biodiversity loss and species invasions may affect more species than previously thought.
Jennifer A Dunne - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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parasites in Food Webs the ultimate missing links
Ecology Letters, 2008Co-Authors: Kevin D Lafferty, Stefano Allesina, Jennifer A Dunne, Matias Arim, Cherie J Briggs, Giulio A De Leo, Andrew P Dobson, Pieter T J Johnson, Armand M Kuris, David J MarcoglieseAbstract:Parasitism is the most common consumer strategy among organisms, yet only recently has there been a call for the inclusion of infectious disease agents in Food Webs. The value of this effort hinges on whether parasites affect Food-web properties. Increasing evidence suggests that parasites have the potential to uniquely alter Food-web topology in terms of chain length, connectance and robustness. In addition, parasites might affect Food-web stability, interaction strength and energy flow. Food-web structure also affects infectious disease dynamics because parasites depend on the ecological networks in which they live. Empirically, incorporating parasites into Food Webs is straightforward. We may start with existing Food Webs and add parasites as nodes, or we may try to build Food Webs around systems for which we already have a good understanding of infectious processes. In the future, perhaps researchers will add parasites while they construct Food Webs. Less clear is how Food-web theory can accommodate parasites. This is a deep and central problem in theoretical biology and applied mathematics. For instance, is representing parasites with complex life cycles as a single node equivalent to representing other species with ontogenetic niche shifts as a single node? Can parasitism fit into fundamental frameworks such as the niche model? Can we integrate infectious disease models into the emerging field of dynamic Food-web modelling? Future progress will benefit from interdisciplinary collaborations between ecologists and infectious disease biologists.
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compilation and network analyses of cambrian Food Webs
PLOS Biology, 2008Co-Authors: Jennifer A Dunne, Neo D Martinez, Richard J. Williams, Rachel Wood, Douglas H ErwinAbstract:A rich body of empirically grounded theory has developed about Food Webs—the networks of feeding relationships among species within habitats. However, detailed Food-web data and analyses are lacking for ancient ecosystems, largely because of the low resolution of taxa coupled with uncertain and incomplete information about feeding interactions. These impediments appear insurmountable for most fossil assemblages; however, a few assemblages with excellent soft-body preservation across trophic levels are candidates for Food-web data compilation and topological analysis. Here we present plausible, detailed Food Webs for the Chengjiang and Burgess Shale assemblages from the Cambrian Period. Analyses of degree distributions and other structural network properties, including sensitivity analyses of the effects of uncertainty associated with Cambrian diet designations, suggest that these early Paleozoic communities share remarkably similar topology with modern Food Webs. Observed regularities reflect a systematic dependence of structure on the numbers of taxa and links in a web. Most aspects of Cambrian Food-web structure are well-characterized by a simple “niche model,” which was developed for modern Food Webs and takes into account this scale dependence. However, a few aspects of topology differ between the ancient and recent Webs: longer path lengths between species and more species in feeding loops in the earlier Chengjiang web, and higher variability in the number of links per species for both Cambrian Webs. Our results are relatively insensitive to the exclusion of low-certainty or random links. The many similarities between Cambrian and recent Food Webs point toward surprisingly strong and enduring constraints on the organization of complex feeding interactions among metazoan species. The few differences could reflect a transition to more strongly integrated and constrained trophic organization within ecosystems following the rapid diversification of species, body plans, and trophic roles during the Cambrian radiation. More research is needed to explore the generality of Food-web structure through deep time and across habitats, especially to investigate potential mechanisms that could give rise to similar structure, as well as any differences.
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ecological networks linking structure to dynamics in Food Webs
2006Co-Authors: Mercedes Pascual, Jennifer A DunneAbstract:M. Pascual and J. A. Dunne: Preface PART I: INTRODUCTION 1: M. Pascual and J. A. Dunne: From Small to Large Ecological Networks in a Dynamic World PART II: STRUCTURE OF COMPLEX ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS 2: J. A. Dunne: The Network Structure of Food Webs 3: C. C. Cartozo, G. Garlaschelli, and G. Caldarelli: Graph Theory and Food Webs 4: A. Dobson, K. Lafferty, and A. Kuris: Parasites and Food Webs 5: J. Bascompte and P. Jordano: The Structure of Plant-Animal Mutualistic Networks PART III: INTEGRATING ECOLOGICAL STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS 6: N. D. Martinez, R. J. Williams, and J. A. Dunne: Diversity, Complexity, and Persistance in Large Model Ecosystems 7: Exploring Network Space with Genetic Algorithms Modularity, Resilience, and Reactivity 8: J. F. Gillooly, A. P. Allen, and J. H. Brown: Food-Web Structure and Dynamics: Reconciling Alternative Ecological Currencies PART IV: ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS AS EVOLVING, ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS 9: A. J. McKane and B. Drossel: Models of Food-Web Evolution 10: S. D. Peacor, R. L. Riolo, and M. Pascual: Phenotypic Plasticity and Species Coexistence: Modeling Food Webs as Complex Adaptive Systems 11: C. O. Wilke and S. S. Chow: Exploring the Evolution of Ecosystems with Digital Organisms 12: N. D. Martinez: Network Evolution: Exploring the Change and Adaptation of Complex Ecological Systems over Deep Time PART V: STABILITY AND ROBUSTNESS OF ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS 13: R. V. Sole and J. M. Montoya: Ecological Network Meltdown from Habitat Loss and Fragmentatino 14: J. Memmott, David Alonso, E. L. Berlow, A. Dobson, J. A. Dunne, R. V. Sole, and J. Weitz: Biodiversity Loss and Ecological Network Structure 15: M. Pascual, J. A. Dunne, and S. A. Levin: Challenges for the Future: Integrating Ecological Structure and Dynamics
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the network structure of Food Webs
2005Co-Authors: Jennifer A DunneAbstract:Descriptions of Food-web relationships first appeared more than a century ago, and the quantitative analysis of the network structure of Food Webs dates back several decades. Recent improvements in Food-web data collection and analysis methods, coupled with a resurgence of interdisciplinary research on the topology of many kinds of “real-world”networks, have resulted in renewed interest in Food-web structure. This chapter reviews the history of the search for generalities in the structure of complex Food Webs, and discusses current and future research trends. Analysis of Food-web structure has used empirical and modeling approaches, and has been inspired both by questions from ecology such as “What factors promote stability of complex ecosystems given internal dynamics and external perturbations?”and questions from network research such as “Do Food Webs display universal structure similar to other types of networks?”Recent research has suggested that once variable diversity and connectance are taken into account, there are universal coarse-grained characteristics of how trophic links and species
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network structure and robustness of marine Food Webs
Marine Ecology Progress Series, 2004Co-Authors: Neo D Martinez, Richard J. Williams, Jennifer A DunneAbstract:Previous studies suggest that Food-web theory has yet to account for major differences in Food-web properties of marine versus other types of ecosystems. We examined this issue by ana- lyzing the network structure of Food Webs for the Northeast US Shelf, a Caribbean reef, and Benguela, off South Africa. The values of connectance (links per species 2 ), link density (links per spe- cies), mean chain length, and fractions of intermediate, omnivorous, and cannibalistic taxa of these marine Webs are somewhat high but still within the ranges observed in other Webs. We further com- pared the marine Webs by using the empirically corroborated 'niche model' that accounts for observed variation in diversity (taxon number) and complexity (connectance). Our results substanti- ate previously reported results for estuarine, fresh-water, and terrestrial datasets, which suggests that Food Webs from different types of ecosystems with variable diversity and complexity share fun- damental structural and ordering characteristics. Analyses of potential secondary extinctions result- ing from species loss show that the structural robustness of marine Food Webs is also consistent with trends from other Food Webs. As expected, given their relatively high connectance, marine Food Webs appear fairly robust to loss of most-connected taxa as well as random taxa. Still, the short average path length between marine taxa (1.6 links) suggests that effects from perturbations, such as over- fishing, can be transmitted more widely throughout marine ecosystems than previously appreciated.
Richard J. Williams - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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compilation and network analyses of cambrian Food Webs
PLOS Biology, 2008Co-Authors: Jennifer A Dunne, Neo D Martinez, Richard J. Williams, Rachel Wood, Douglas H ErwinAbstract:A rich body of empirically grounded theory has developed about Food Webs—the networks of feeding relationships among species within habitats. However, detailed Food-web data and analyses are lacking for ancient ecosystems, largely because of the low resolution of taxa coupled with uncertain and incomplete information about feeding interactions. These impediments appear insurmountable for most fossil assemblages; however, a few assemblages with excellent soft-body preservation across trophic levels are candidates for Food-web data compilation and topological analysis. Here we present plausible, detailed Food Webs for the Chengjiang and Burgess Shale assemblages from the Cambrian Period. Analyses of degree distributions and other structural network properties, including sensitivity analyses of the effects of uncertainty associated with Cambrian diet designations, suggest that these early Paleozoic communities share remarkably similar topology with modern Food Webs. Observed regularities reflect a systematic dependence of structure on the numbers of taxa and links in a web. Most aspects of Cambrian Food-web structure are well-characterized by a simple “niche model,” which was developed for modern Food Webs and takes into account this scale dependence. However, a few aspects of topology differ between the ancient and recent Webs: longer path lengths between species and more species in feeding loops in the earlier Chengjiang web, and higher variability in the number of links per species for both Cambrian Webs. Our results are relatively insensitive to the exclusion of low-certainty or random links. The many similarities between Cambrian and recent Food Webs point toward surprisingly strong and enduring constraints on the organization of complex feeding interactions among metazoan species. The few differences could reflect a transition to more strongly integrated and constrained trophic organization within ecosystems following the rapid diversification of species, body plans, and trophic roles during the Cambrian radiation. More research is needed to explore the generality of Food-web structure through deep time and across habitats, especially to investigate potential mechanisms that could give rise to similar structure, as well as any differences.
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allometric scaling enhances stability in complex Food Webs
Ecology Letters, 2006Co-Authors: Ulrich Brose, Richard J. Williams, Neo D MartinezAbstract:Classic local stability theory predicts that complex ecological networks are unstable and are unlikely to persist despite empiricists' abundant documentation of such complexity in nature. This contradiction has puzzled biologists for decades. While some have explored how stability may be achieved in small modules of a few interacting species, rigorous demonstrations of how large complex and ecologically realistic networks dynamically persist remain scarce and inadequately understood. Here, we help fill this void by combining structural models of complex Food Webs with nonlinear bioenergetic models of population dynamics parameterized by biological rates that are allometrically scaled to populations' average body masses. Increasing predator-prey body mass ratios increase population persistence up to a saturation level that is reached by invertebrate and ectotherm vertebrate predators when being 10 or 100 times larger than their prey respectively. These values are corroborated by empirical predator-prey body mass ratios from a global data base. Moreover, negative effects of diversity (i.e. species richness) on stability (i.e. population persistence) become neutral or positive relationships at these empirical ratios. These results demonstrate that the predator-prey body mass ratios found in nature may be key to enabling persistence of populations in complex Food Webs and stabilizing the diversity of natural ecosystems.
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network structure and robustness of marine Food Webs
Marine Ecology Progress Series, 2004Co-Authors: Neo D Martinez, Richard J. Williams, Jennifer A DunneAbstract:Previous studies suggest that Food-web theory has yet to account for major differences in Food-web properties of marine versus other types of ecosystems. We examined this issue by ana- lyzing the network structure of Food Webs for the Northeast US Shelf, a Caribbean reef, and Benguela, off South Africa. The values of connectance (links per species 2 ), link density (links per spe- cies), mean chain length, and fractions of intermediate, omnivorous, and cannibalistic taxa of these marine Webs are somewhat high but still within the ranges observed in other Webs. We further com- pared the marine Webs by using the empirically corroborated 'niche model' that accounts for observed variation in diversity (taxon number) and complexity (connectance). Our results substanti- ate previously reported results for estuarine, fresh-water, and terrestrial datasets, which suggests that Food Webs from different types of ecosystems with variable diversity and complexity share fun- damental structural and ordering characteristics. Analyses of potential secondary extinctions result- ing from species loss show that the structural robustness of marine Food Webs is also consistent with trends from other Food Webs. As expected, given their relatively high connectance, marine Food Webs appear fairly robust to loss of most-connected taxa as well as random taxa. Still, the short average path length between marine taxa (1.6 links) suggests that effects from perturbations, such as over- fishing, can be transmitted more widely throughout marine ecosystems than previously appreciated.
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limits to trophic levels and omnivory in complex Food Webs theory and data
The American Naturalist, 2004Co-Authors: Richard J. Williams, Neo D MartinezAbstract:Abstract: While trophic levels have found broad application throughout ecology, they are also in much contention on analytical and empirical grounds. Here, we use a new generation of data and theory to examine long‐standing questions about trophic‐level limits and degrees of omnivory. The data include Food Webs of the Chesapeake Bay, U.S.A., the island of Saint Martin, a U.K. grassland, and a Florida seagrass community, which appear to be the most trophically complete Food Webs available in the primary literature due to their inclusion of autotrophs and empirically derived estimates of the relative energetic contributions of each trophic link. We show that most (54%) of the 212 species in the four Food Webs can be unambiguously assigned to a discrete trophic level. Omnivory among the remaining species appears to be quite limited, as judged by the standard deviation of omnivores’ energy‐weighted Food‐chain lengths. This allows simple algorithms based on binary Food Webs without energetic details to yield s...
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two degrees of separation in complex Food Webs
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2002Co-Authors: Richard J. Williams, Jennifer A Dunne, Eric L Berlow, Albertlaszlo Barabasi, Neo D MartinezAbstract:Feeding relationships can cause invasions, extirpations, and population fluctuations of a species to dramatically affect other species within a variety of natural habitats. Empirical evidence suggests that such strong effects rarely propagate through Food Webs more than three links away from the initial perturbation. However, the size of these spheres of potential influence within complex communities is generally unknown. Here, we show for that species within large communities from a variety of aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are on average two links apart, with >95% of species typically within three links of each other. Species are drawn even closer as network complexity and, more unexpectedly, species richness increase. Our findings are based on seven of the largest and most complex Food Webs available as well as a Food-web model that extends the generality of the empirical results. These results indicate that the dynamics of species within ecosystems may be more highly interconnected and that biodiversity loss and species invasions may affect more species than previously thought.
Francois Edwards - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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drought alters the structure and functioning of complex Food Webs
Nature Climate Change, 2013Co-Authors: Mark E Ledger, Francois Edwards, Lee E Brown, Alexander M Milner, Guy WoodwardAbstract:Climatic changes could transform rivers as drought becomes more frequent with potentially severe, but largely unknown, consequences at multispecies levels of organization. Now research shows experimentally how the intensification of drought may alter the underlying structure and functioning of freshwater Food Webs.
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individual based Food Webs species identity body size and sampling effects
Advances in Ecological Research, 2010Co-Authors: Guy Woodward, David Figueroa, Francois Edwards, Julia L Blanchard, Rasmus B Lauridsen, Iwan J Jones, Philip H Warren, Owen L PetcheyAbstract:The study of Food Webs has been a central theme within ecology for decades, and their structure and dynamics have been used to assess a range of key properties of communities (e.g. complexity–stability relationships) and ecosystems (e.g. fluxes of energy and nutrients). However, many Food web parameters are sensitive to sampling effort, which is rarely considered, and further, most studies have used either species- or size-averaged data for both nodes and links, rather than individual-based data, which is the level of organisation at which trophic interactions occur. This practice of aggregating data hides a considerable amount of biologically meaningful variation and could, together with potential sampling effects, create methodological artefacts. New individual-based approaches could improve our understanding of, and ability to predict, Food web structure and dynamics, particularly if they are derived from simple metabolic and foraging constraints. We explored the effect of species-averaging in four highly-resolved individual-based aquatic Food Webs (Broadstone Stream, the Afon Hirnant, Tadnoll Brook and the Celtic Sea) and found that it obscured structural regularities resulting from intraspecific size variation. The individual-based approach provided clearer insights into seasonal and ontogenetic shifts, highlighting the importance of the temporal component of size-structuring in ecological networks. An extension of the Allometric Diet Breadth Model predicted the structure of the empirical Food Webs almost twice as accurately as the equivalent species-based Webs, with the best-fitting model predicting 83% of the links correctly in the Broadstone Stream size-based web, and the few mismatches between the model and data were explained largely by sampling effects. Our results highlight the need for theoretical explanations to correspond closely with methods of data collection and aggregation, which is the exception rather than the rule at present. We suggest how this situation can be improved by including individual-level data and more explicit information on sampling effort when constructing Food Webs in future studies.
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Ecological networks - Beyond Food Webs
Journal of Animal Ecology, 2009Co-Authors: Thomas C. Ings, Lee Brown, Ute Jacob, Jordi Bascompte, David Figueroa, Carsten F Dormann, Francois Edwards, Jose M Montoya, Nico Bluthgen, J. Iwan JonesAbstract:1. A fundamental goal of ecological network research is to understand how the complexity observed in nature can persist and how this affects ecosystem functioning. This is essential for us to be able to predict, and eventually mitigate, the consequences of increasing environmental pertur-bations such as habitat loss, climate change, and invasions of exotic species. 2. Ecological networks can be subdivided into three broad types: 'traditional' Food Webs, mutual-istic networks and host–parasitoid networks. There is a recent trend towards cross-comparisons among network types and also to take a more mechanistic, as opposed to phenomenological, perspective. For example, analysis of network configurations, such as compartments, allows us to explore the role of co-evolution in structuring mutualistic networks and host–parasitoid networks, and of body size in Food Webs. 3. Research into ecological networks has recently undergone a renaissance, leading to the production of a new catalogue of evermore complete, taxonomically resolved, and quantitative data. Novel topological patterns have been unearthed and it is increasingly evident that it is the distribution of interaction strengths and the configuration of complexity, rather than just its magnitude, that governs network stability and structure. 4. Another significant advance is the growing recognition of the importance of individual traits and behaviour: interactions, after all, occur between individuals. The new generation of high-quality networks is now enabling us to move away from describing networks based on species-averaged data and to start exploring patterns based on individuals. Such refinements will enable us to address more general ecological questions relating to foraging theory and the recent metabolic theory of ecology. 5. We conclude by suggesting a number of 'dead ends' and 'fruitful avenues' for future research into ecological networks.
J. Iwan Jones - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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Ecological networks - Beyond Food Webs
Journal of Animal Ecology, 2009Co-Authors: Thomas C. Ings, Lee Brown, Ute Jacob, Jordi Bascompte, David Figueroa, Carsten F Dormann, Francois Edwards, Jose M Montoya, Nico Bluthgen, J. Iwan JonesAbstract:1. A fundamental goal of ecological network research is to understand how the complexity observed in nature can persist and how this affects ecosystem functioning. This is essential for us to be able to predict, and eventually mitigate, the consequences of increasing environmental pertur-bations such as habitat loss, climate change, and invasions of exotic species. 2. Ecological networks can be subdivided into three broad types: 'traditional' Food Webs, mutual-istic networks and host–parasitoid networks. There is a recent trend towards cross-comparisons among network types and also to take a more mechanistic, as opposed to phenomenological, perspective. For example, analysis of network configurations, such as compartments, allows us to explore the role of co-evolution in structuring mutualistic networks and host–parasitoid networks, and of body size in Food Webs. 3. Research into ecological networks has recently undergone a renaissance, leading to the production of a new catalogue of evermore complete, taxonomically resolved, and quantitative data. Novel topological patterns have been unearthed and it is increasingly evident that it is the distribution of interaction strengths and the configuration of complexity, rather than just its magnitude, that governs network stability and structure. 4. Another significant advance is the growing recognition of the importance of individual traits and behaviour: interactions, after all, occur between individuals. The new generation of high-quality networks is now enabling us to move away from describing networks based on species-averaged data and to start exploring patterns based on individuals. Such refinements will enable us to address more general ecological questions relating to foraging theory and the recent metabolic theory of ecology. 5. We conclude by suggesting a number of 'dead ends' and 'fruitful avenues' for future research into ecological networks.
