Interaction strength combinations and the overfishing of a marine food web
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 nonran- domly in a large Caribbean marine food web. Specifically, the cooccurrence of strong interactions on two cons...
| Autores: | , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2005 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/41647 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/41647 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Community stability omnivory trophic chain trophic cascade quantitative networks |
| Sumario: | 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 nonran- domly 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 accompa- nied by strong omnivory more often than expected by chance. By using a food web model, we show that these interaction strength combinations reduce the likelihood of trophic cascades after the overfishing of top predators. However, fishing selectively removes predators that are overrepresented in strongly interacting chains. Hence, the potential for strong community-wide effects remains a threat. |
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