Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Stouffer DB
PROVIDER: S-EPMC1748169 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Dec
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Stouffer Daniel B DB Camacho Juan J Amaral Luís A Nunes LA
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20061204 50
Intervality of a food web is related to the number of trophic dimensions characterizing the niches in a community. We introduce here a mathematically robust measure for food web intervality. It has previously been noted that empirical food webs are not strictly interval; however, upon comparison to suitable null hypotheses, we conclude that empirical food webs actually do exhibit a strong bias toward contiguity of prey, that is, toward intervality. Further, our results strongly suggest that empi ...[more]