Food web cohesion

Both dynamic and topologic approaches in food webs have shown how structure alters conditions for stability. However, while most studies concerning the structure of food webs have shown a nonrandom pattern, it still remains unclear how this structure is related to compartmentalization and to respons...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology (Durham) 2004-02, Vol.85 (2), p.352-358
Main Authors: Melián, Carlos J., Bascompte, Jordi
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal and plant ecology
Animal ecology
Animal, plant and microbial ecology
Biological and medical sciences
City states
cohesion
compartmentalization
connectance
Ecology
Ecosystems
Food chains
food web structure
Food webs
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
General aspects
Human ecology
Marine ecology
Marine ecosystems
null model
Statistical analysis
subweb
Synecology
Trophic relationships
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Summary:Both dynamic and topologic approaches in food webs have shown how structure alters conditions for stability. However, while most studies concerning the structure of food webs have shown a nonrandom pattern, it still remains unclear how this structure is related to compartmentalization and to responses to perturbations. Here we build a bridge between connectance, food web structure, and compartmentalization by studying how links are distributed within and between subwebs. A "k subweb" is defined as a subset of species that are connected to at least k species from the same subset. We study the k subweb frequency distribution (i.e., the number of k subwebs in each food web). This distribution is highly skewed, decaying in all cases as a power law. The most dense subweb has the most interactions, despite containing a small number of species, and shows connectivity values independent of species richness. The removal of the most dense subweb implies multiple fragmentation. Our results show a cohesive organization, that is, a high number of small subwebs highly connected among themselves through the most dense subweb. We discuss the implications of this organization in relation to different types of disturbances.
ISSN:0012-9658
1939-9170
DOI:10.1890/02-0638