Dataset Information

Winter is coming: Food web structure and seasonality in a subtropical freshwater coastal lake.

ABSTRACT: Food web studies provide a useful tool to assess the organization and complexity of natural communities. Nevertheless, the seasonal dynamics of food web properties, their environmental correlates, and potential association with community diversity and stability remain poorly studied. Here, we condensed an incomplete 6-year community dataset of a subtropical coastal lake to examine how monthly variation in diversity impacts food web structure over an idealized time series for an averaged year. Phytoplankton, zooplankton, macroinvertebrates, and fish were mostly resolved to species level (n = 120 trophospecies). Our results showed that the seasonal organization of the food web could be aggregated into two clusters of months grouped here as 'summer' and 'winter'. During 'winter', the food web decreases in size and complexity, with the number of trophospecies dropping from 106 to 82 (a 22.6% decrease in the number of nodes) and the trophic interactions from 1,049 to 637 between month extremes (a 39.3% drop in the number of links). The observed simplification in food web structure during 'winter' suggests that community stability is more vulnerable to the impact of any change during this period.

SUBMITTER: Peralta-Maraver I

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5496567 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Winter is coming: Food web structure and seasonality in a subtropical freshwater coastal lake.

Peralta-Maraver Ignacio I Robertson Anne L AL Rezende Enrico L EL Lemes da Silva Aurea Luiza AL Tonetta Denise D Lopes Michelle M Schmitt Rafael R Leite Nei K NK Nuñer Alex A Petrucio Mauricio M MM

Ecology and evolution 20170517 13

Food web studies provide a useful tool to assess the organization and complexity of natural communities. Nevertheless, the seasonal dynamics of food web properties, their environmental correlates, and potential association with community diversity and stability remain poorly studied. Here, we condensed an incomplete 6-year community dataset of a subtropical coastal lake to examine how monthly variation in diversity impacts food web structure over an idealized time series for an averaged year. Ph ...[more]

PMID: 28690784

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Dataset Information

Winter is coming: Food web structure and seasonality in a subtropical freshwater coastal lake.

Publications

Winter is coming: Food web structure and seasonality in a subtropical freshwater coastal lake.

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