Phylogenetic signal in predator-prey body-size relationships

Body mass is a fundamental characteristic that affects metabolism, life history, and population abundance and frequently sets bounds on who eats whom in food webs. Based on a collection of topological food webs, Ulrich Brose and colleagues presented a general relationship between the body mass of pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology (Durham) 2011-12, Vol.92 (12), p.2183-2189
Main Authors: Naisbit, Russell E, Kehrli, Patrik, Rohr, Rudolf P, Bersier, Louis-Félix
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
allometry
Animal and plant ecology
Animal ecology
Animal physiology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Animalia
Animals
Biological and medical sciences
Biological taxonomies
body mass
Body mass index
Body Size
body-size ratio
Food Chain
Food chains
Food webs
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General aspects
Grafen's ρ
Habitats
Marine ecology
metabolic theory of food-web ecology
Metabolism
Pagel's λ
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
Predation
Predators
trophic interactions
Trophic relationships
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Summary:Body mass is a fundamental characteristic that affects metabolism, life history, and population abundance and frequently sets bounds on who eats whom in food webs. Based on a collection of topological food webs, Ulrich Brose and colleagues presented a general relationship between the body mass of predators and their prey and analyzed how mean predator-prey body-mass ratios differed among habitats and predator metabolic categories. Here we show that the general body-mass relationship conceals significant variation associated with both predator and prey phylogeny. Major-axis regressions between the log body mass of predators and prey differed among taxonomic groups. The global pattern for Kingdom Animalia had slope >1, but phyla and classes varied, and several had slopes significantly
ISSN:0012-9658
1939-9170
DOI:10.1890/10-2234.1