Species‐rich ecosystems are vulnerable to cascading extinctions in an increasingly variable world

Ecology and Evolution

Linda Kaneryd²  Charlotte Borrvall²  Sofia Berg²  Alva Curtsdotter²  Anna Eklöf²  Céline Hauzy²  Tomas Jonsson¹  Peter Münger²  Malin Setzer²  Torbjörn Säterberg² 

[1] Ecological Modelling Group, Systems Biology Research Centre, Skövde University, SE-54128 Skövde, Sweden;Division of Theoretical Biology, Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology, Linköping University, SE-58183 Linköping, Sweden

关键词: Biodiversity;    climate change;    ecological networks;    environmental variability;    extinction cascades;    food web;    species interactions;    stability;    stochastic models;    weather extremes;   

DOI  :  10.1002/ece3.218

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

Global warming leads to increased intensity and frequency of weather extremes. Such increased environmental variability might in turn result in increased variation in the demographic rates of interacting species with potentially important consequences for the dynamics of food webs. Using a theoretical approach, we here explore the response of food webs to a highly variable environment. We investigate how species richness and correlation in the responses of species to environmental fluctuations affect the risk of extinction cascades. We find that the risk of extinction cascades increases with increasing species richness, especially when correlation among species is low. Initial extinctions of primary producer species unleash bottom-up extinction cascades, especially in webs with specialist consumers. In this sense, species-rich ecosystems are less robust to increasing levels of environmental variability than species-poor ones. Our study thus suggests that highly species-rich ecosystems such as coral reefs and tropical rainforests might be particularly vulnerable to increased climate variability.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC   
© 2011 The Authors. MicrobiologyOpen published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.