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Spatial compartmentation and food web stability.

ABSTRACT: An important goal in ecology has been to reveal what enables diverse species to be maintained in natural ecosystems. A particular interaction network structure, compartments, divided subsystems with minimal linkage to other subsystems, has been emphasized as a key stabilizer of community dynamics. This concept inherently includes spatiality because communities are physically separated. Nevertheless, few theoretical studies have explicitly focused on such spatial compartmentation. Here using a meta-community model of a food web, I show that compartments have less effect on community stability than previously thought. Instead, less compartmentation of a food web can greatly increase stability, particularly when subsystems are moderately coupled by species migration. Furthermore, compartmentation has a strong destabilization effect in larger systems. The results of the present study suggest that spatial limitation of species interactions rather than of community interactions plays a key role in ecosystem maintenance.

SUBMITTER: Mougi A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6215003 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Spatial compartmentation and food web stability.

Mougi Akihiko A

Scientific reports 20181102 1

An important goal in ecology has been to reveal what enables diverse species to be maintained in natural ecosystems. A particular interaction network structure, compartments, divided subsystems with minimal linkage to other subsystems, has been emphasized as a key stabilizer of community dynamics. This concept inherently includes spatiality because communities are physically separated. Nevertheless, few theoretical studies have explicitly focused on such spatial compartmentation. Here using a me ...[more]

PMID: 30390034

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Project description:Seagrass beds provide important habitat for a wide range of marine species but are threatened by multiple human impacts in coastal waters. Although seagrass communities have been well-studied in the field, a quantification of their food-web structure and functioning, and how these change across space and human impacts has been lacking. Motivated by extensive field surveys and literature information, we analyzed the structural features of food webs associated with Zostera marina across 16 study sites in 3 provinces in Atlantic Canada. Our goals were to (i) quantify differences in food-web structure across local and regional scales and human impacts, (ii) assess the robustness of seagrass webs to simulated species loss, and (iii) compare food-web structure in temperate Atlantic seagrass beds with those of other aquatic ecosystems. We constructed individual food webs for each study site and cumulative webs for each province and the entire region based on presence/absence of species, and calculated 16 structural properties for each web. Our results indicate that food-web structure was similar among low impact sites across regions. With increasing human impacts associated with eutrophication, however, food-web structure show evidence of degradation as indicated by fewer trophic groups, lower maximum trophic level of the highest top predator, fewer trophic links connecting top to basal species, higher fractions of herbivores and intermediate consumers, and higher number of prey per species. These structural changes translate into functional changes with impacted sites being less robust to simulated species loss. Temperate Atlantic seagrass webs are similar to a tropical seagrass web, yet differed from other aquatic webs, suggesting consistent food-web characteristics across seagrass ecosystems in different regions. Our study illustrates that food-web structure and functioning of seagrass habitats change with human impacts and that the spatial scale of food-web analysis is critical for determining results.

Dataset Information

Spatial compartmentation and food web stability.

Publications

Spatial compartmentation and food web stability.

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