Integrating Economic dynamics into Ecological Networks: The case of fishery sustainability

Abstract

26Understanding and sustainably managing anthropogenic impact on ecosystems requires studying the 27 integrated economic -ecological dynamics driving coupled human-natural systems. Here, we expand 28 ecological network theory to study fishery sustainability by incorporating economic drivers into food-web 29 models to evaluate the dynamics of thousands of single-species fisheries across hundreds of generated 30 food-webs and two management strategies. Analysis reveals harvesting high population biomass species 31 can initially support fishery persistence, but threatens long term economic and ecological sustainability by 32 indirectly inducing extinction cascades in non-harvested species. This dynamic is exacerbated in open 33 access fisheries where profit driven growth in fishing effort increases perturbation strength. Results 34 demonstrate the unique insight into both ecological dynamics and sustainability garnered from 35 considering economically dynamic fishing effort in the network. 36 37 38 39 One Sentence Summary: Integrating economic drivers into ecological networks reveal non-linear drivers 40 of sustainability in fisheries. 41 42 Main 43The advent of network theory in ecology and environmental studies has greatly advanced the 44 study of ecological dynamics and complexity (1, 2). These advances have also translated into a growing 45 knowledge of how human caused disturbances can create far-reaching ecological impacts through indirect 46 effects (3-6). Often, however, the disturbances in these network studies have been studied as a one-time 47

Alteration of coastal productivity and artisanal fisheries interact to affect a marine food web

“…Previous work shows that the ATN model is capable of describing community dynamics remarkably well 88,[90][91][92][93] and that it is robust to parametrization 53 . Part of the analytical power of the ATN approach is that ecological interactions are reasonably parameterized with species body masses, allowing researchers to focus their on other model aspects 50 .…”

“…Most of these studies used a static approach, which stems from network theory and analyzes the impacts of structural changes on food webs represented by nodes (species) and links (interactions) that connect nodes, but ignores interaction strengths and population dynamics of interacting species 38 . Other studies used a dynamic approach, which considers not only the structure and intensity of interactions in a food web, but also the changes in species biomasses through time and the indirect effects that these changes have on other species [39][40][41][48][49][50] . Here, we use both approaches to understand the relative importance of harvested species in our food web.…”