Interaction strength combinations and the overfishing of a marine food web.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Bascompte J
PROVIDER: S-EPMC556268 | biostudies-literature | 2005 Apr
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
Publications
Interaction strength combinations and the overfishing of a marine food web.
Bascompte Jordi J Melián Carlos J CJ Sala Enric E
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20050331 15
The stability of ecological communities largely depends on the strength of interactions between predators and their prey. Here we show that these interaction strengths are structured nonrandomly in a large Caribbean marine food web. Specifically, the cooccurrence of strong interactions on two consecutive levels of food chains occurs less frequently than expected by chance. Even when they occur, these strongly interacting chains are accompanied by strong omnivory more often than expected by chanc ...[more]
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