Disturbance, resource supply, and food‐web architecture in streams

Thompson, Wesley K.; McIntosh, James R.; Kilroy,; Edwards,; Scarsbrook,

doi:10.1046/j.1461-0248.1998.00039.x

Cited by 187 publications

(154 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…In this context, there are clear questions that now can be addressed in food-web ecology. Describing how food web topology changes along environmental gradients such as eutrophication or physical disturbance [86,87] and over time in heavily impacted systems is the first step [75]. Linking these topological changes to changes in ecosystem functioning and the robustness of systems to further change is a major challenge.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food webs: reconciling the structure and function of biodiversity

Thompson

Brose

Dunne

et al. 2012

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

575

500

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The global biodiversity crisis concerns not only unprecedented loss of species within communities, but also related consequences for ecosystem function. Community ecology focuses on patterns of species richness and community composition, whereas ecosystem ecology focuses on fluxes of energy and materials. Food webs provide a quantitative framework to combine these approaches and unify the study of biodiversity and ecosystem function. We summarise the progression of foodweb ecology and the challenges in using the food-web approach. We identify five areas of research where these advances can continue, and be applied to global challenges. Finally, we describe what data are needed in the next generation of food-web studies to reconcile the structure and function of biodiversity.Reconciling the study of biodiversity and ecosystem function We are experiencing two interrelated global ecological crises. One is in biodiversity, with unprecedented rates of species loss across all major ecosystems, combined with greatly accelerated biotic exchange between landmasses [1]. Consequently, spatial and temporal patterns of species occurrence are being fundamentally altered by extinction and invasion. The second crisis concerns the regulation of ecological processes and the ecosystem services they provide. Processes such as primary production and nutrient cycling have been severely altered by human activities [1].Our understanding of biodiversity comes largely from a sound theoretical and empirical basis provided by community ecology, including core concepts such as niche segregation [2] and Island Biogeography [3,4]. Early studies of individual species' habitat preferences and physiological tolerances have been complemented by studies of interspecific interactions from field surveys and experiments. Applications such as conservation management depend largely on mapping of community patterns and studies of habitat occupancy and preferences. More recently, habitat models have been applied, and the advent of simple and cheap molecular markers has allowed quantification of important community assembly (see Glossary) processes such as dispersal [5]. In community ecology the unit of study is the individual, population, or species, consistent with other sub-disciplines such as behavioural and population biology. Review GlossaryAssembly: the set of processes by which a food web is rebuilt after disturbance or the creation of new habitat. Bioenergetics: the flow and transformation of energy in and between living organisms and between living organisms and their environment. Cascade model: a food-web model which assumes hierarchical feeding along a single niche axis, with each species allocated a probability of feeding on taxa below it in the hierarchy. Community web: a food web intended to include all species and trophic links that occur within a defined ecological community. 'Species' in this sense might involve various degrees of aggregation or division of biological species. Compartmentalisation: the property by which one subset of sp...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Food webs: reconciling the structure and function of biodiversity

Thompson

Brose

Dunne

et al. 2012

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

575

500

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Dunne et al, 2002a;Krause et al, 2003;Townsend et al, 1998) and not produced replicate food webs from the one system but with different levels of disturbance. Furthermore, quantified information on biomass fluxes was generated to gain a more balanced view of the role of particular species and links within the context of the network, rather than weighting each equally .…”

Section: P0420mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Menge and Sutherland, 1976); however, empirical tests of disturbance impacts on food chain length in streams have yielded contrasting results, reflecting different approaches, methodologies and focal disturbance regimes. Flood disturbances have reportedly increased (Marks et al, 2000), decreased (Parker and Huryn, 2006) or not affected (Townsend et al, 1998) food chain length in streams. Drought disturbance studies have been slower to emerge, revealing reductions in food chain length where dewatering occurs Sabo et al, 2010), or no change where flow reduction is less severe (Walters and Post, 2008).…”

Section: P0575mentioning

confidence: 99%

Extreme Climatic Events Alter Aquatic Food Webs

Ledger

Brown

Edwards

et al. 2013

Global Change in Multispecies Systems: Part 3

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“…We analysed nine published food webs: Caribbean [25], El Verde [31], Little Rock [32], Mill Stream (Ledger, Edwards & Woodward, unpublished data, see [11]), Stony Island [33], Tuesday Lake [34],Weddell Sea [35] and two versions of Ythan Estuary [36]. The difference between the two versions of the Ythan Estuary is that in the version from 1996 parasites are included, whereas in the 1991 version they are not.…”

Section: (A) Food Websmentioning

confidence: 99%

Relevance of evolutionary history for food web structure

et al. 2011

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Explaining the structure of ecosystems is one of the great challenges of ecology. Simple models for food web structure aim at disentangling the complexity of ecological interaction networks and detect the main forces that are responsible for their shape. Trophic interactions are influenced by species traits, which in turn are largely determined by evolutionary history. Closely related species are more likely to share similar traits, such as body size, feeding mode and habitat preference than distant ones. Here, we present a theoretical framework for analysing whether evolutionary history-represented by taxonomic classificationprovides valuable information on food web structure. In doing so, we measure which taxonomic ranks better explain species interactions. Our analysis is based on partitioning of the species into taxonomic units. For each partition, we compute the likelihood that a probabilistic model for food web structure reproduces the data using this information. We find that taxonomic partitions produce significantly higher likelihoods than expected at random. Marginal likelihoods (Bayes factors) are used to perform model selection among taxonomic ranks. We show that food webs are best explained by the coarser taxonomic ranks (kingdom to class). Our methods provide a way to explicitly include evolutionary history in models for food web structure.

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Disturbance, resource supply, and food‐web architecture in streams

Cited by 187 publications

References 35 publications

Food webs: reconciling the structure and function of biodiversity

Food webs: reconciling the structure and function of biodiversity

Extreme Climatic Events Alter Aquatic Food Webs

Relevance of evolutionary history for food web structure

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