Food web's backbones and energy delivery in ecosystems

Bellingeri, Michele; Bodini, Antonio

doi:10.1111/oik.02244

Cited by 30 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…Our findings challenge the intuitive hypothesis that the assembly of food webs may be governed by constraints that promote the efficiency of energy delivery across trophic levels (Garlaschelli et al. , Bellingeri and Bodini ). In our simulations, as the efficiency of energy transfer increases, that is, by removing or weakening IGP links, food webs nevertheless have lower diversity, productivity, and total biomass.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 57%

Intraguild predation enhances biodiversity and functioning in complex food webs

Wang

Brose

Gravel

2019

Ecology

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Intraguild predation (IGP), that is, feeding interaction between two consumers that share the same resource species, is commonly observed in natural food webs. IGP expands vertical niche space and slows down energy flows from lower to higher trophic levels, which potentially affects the diversity and dynamics of food webs. Here, we use food‐web models to investigate the effects of IGP on species diversity and ecosystem functioning. We first simulate a five‐species food‐web module with different strengths of IGP at the herbivore and/or carnivore level. Results show that as the strength of IGP within a trophic level increases, the biomass of its resource level increases because of predation release; this increased biomass in turn alters the energy fluxes and biomass of other trophic levels. These results are then extended by subsequent simulations of more diverse food webs. As the strength of IGP increases, simulated food webs maintain (1) higher species diversity at different trophic levels, (2) higher total biomasses at different trophic levels, and (3) larger energy fluxes across trophic levels. Our results challenge the intuitive hypothesis that food‐web structure should maximize the efficiency of energy transfer across trophic levels; instead, they suggest that the assembly of food webs should be governed by a balance between efficiency (of energy transfer) and persistence (i.e., the maintenance of species and biomasses). Our simulations also show that the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning (e.g., total biomass or primary production) is much stronger in the presence of IGP, reconciling the contrast from recent studies based on food‐chain and food‐web models. Our findings shed new light on the functional role of IGP and contribute to resolving the debate on structure, diversity and functioning in complex food webs.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 57%

Intraguild predation enhances biodiversity and functioning in complex food webs

Wang

Brose

Gravel

2019

Ecology

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“…However, in this paper, the information transfer network is a directed one. Thus, we adopt Chu-Liu-Edmond's algorithm [28,29] to build the directed MST. It is also called the maximum arborescence, and is the backbone of a network [29].…”

Section: Directed Maximum Spanning Treementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, we adopt Chu-Liu-Edmond's algorithm [28,29] to build the directed MST. It is also called the maximum arborescence, and is the backbone of a network [29]. Figure 5 shows the directed MSTs in the four sub-phases.…”

Section: Directed Maximum Spanning Treementioning

confidence: 99%

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Cross-Sectoral Information Transfer in the Chinese Stock Market around Its Crash in 2015

Wang

Xia

2018

Entropy

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This paper applies effective transfer entropy to research the information transfer in the Chinese stock market around its crash in 2015. According to the market states, the entire period is divided into four sub-phases: the tranquil, bull, crash, and post-crash periods. Kernel density estimation is used to calculate the effective transfer entropy. Then, the information transfer network is constructed. Nodes’ centralities and the directed maximum spanning trees of the networks are analyzed. The results show that, in the tranquil period, the information transfer is weak in the market. In the bull period, the strength and scope of the information transfer increases. The utility sector outputs a great deal of information and is the hub node for the information flow. In the crash period, the information transfer grows further. The market efficiency in this period is worse than that in the other three sub-periods. The information technology sector is the biggest information source, while the consumer staples sector receives the most information. The interactions of the sectors become more direct. In the post-crash period, information transfer declines but is still stronger than the tranquil time. The financial sector receives the largest amount of information and is the pivot node.

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“…There are thermodynamical limits that constrain some basic structural aspects of ecological networks, such as the number of trophic levels. On the other hand, Bellingeri and Bodini () use tools based in spanning trees – trees formed by the links that keep food webs connected – to show that energy may primarily flow through short links in food webs, albeit not via the shortest link. We are just starting to understand the dynamics of these “adaptive networks” in which dynamics and structure change together (sensu Gross and Sayama ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Ecological networks: assembly and consequences

Guimarães¹,

Deyn

2016

Oikos

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One of the central problems in ecology is to understand how patterns observed in ecological systems are linked to ecological and evolutionary processes (Levin 1992). Ecological systems -as biological systems in general -are examples of what Warren Weaver called, almost 70 years ago, "problems of organized complexity", in which systems are characterized by a sizable number of interrelated elements (Weaver 1948). In the last decades, the problems of organized complexity in different scientific fields have been tackled by depicting systems as networks (Amaral and Ottino 2004). In this approach, ecological systems are characterized as networks composed of co-occurring or interacting elements, and the ecological patterns quantified in terms of network structures. Subsequently a suite of approaches is used to infer the underlying processes shaping network structures and/or to explore the consequences of network structures for the way ecological systems respond to different external factors. The characterization of ecological systems as networks is not new, as illustrated by the seminal work by Cohen, Margalef, May, Odum, Paine and others. However, in the last years the use of networks in ecology has rapidly expanded from more traditional descriptions of food webs to the characterization of a wide range of ecological systems as illustrated by this Oikos special issue. These studies collectively explore the workings of processes that shape networks and the functional consequences of network organization of ecological systems.The notion that network structures in ecological systems inform about the ecological and evolutionary processes is rooted in the intuition that "complex systems must display some organizing principles, which should be at some level encoded in their topology" (Albert and Barabási 2002). In ecological systems, interactions always occur at individual level and, therefore, processes shaping ecological networks are ultimately processes affecting how individuals of different species interact with each other. The most basic aspects affecting interactions among individuals are time and space. For example, Valverde et al. 2016 studied the overlap in the pollinator assemblages of the animal-pollinated plant Erysimum mediohispanicum (Brassicaceae), showing that variation in the phenology of individuals of E. mediohispanicum partially explain the strong temporal variation in the patterns of pollinator overlap among individuals. Other ecological interactions occur in very localized spatial scales. For example, Encinas-Viso et al. ( 2016) show that a combination of spatial organization and stochasticity is sufficient to reproduce much of the organization of co-occurrence networks formed by plants and their associated mycorrhizal fungi. On the other hand, the motif analysis performed by Baiser et al. (2016) supports the notion that the organization of more localized food webs in space reflects, to a great extent, the organization of food webs at larger spatial scales.In addition to temporal and spatial scales, intr...

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Food web's backbones and energy delivery in ecosystems

Cited by 30 publications

References 65 publications

Intraguild predation enhances biodiversity and functioning in complex food webs

Intraguild predation enhances biodiversity and functioning in complex food webs

Cross-Sectoral Information Transfer in the Chinese Stock Market around Its Crash in 2015

Ecological networks: assembly and consequences

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