Degree of intervality of food webs: From body-size data to models

JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY

卷:334

Article

Capitan, Jose A.^1,2,3  Arenas, Alex^2,4  Guimera, Roger^5,6 

[1] GISC, Madrid, Spain

[2] Univ Rovira & Virgili, Dept Engn Informat & Matemat, E-43007 Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain

[3] CSIC, INTA, Ctr Astrobiol, Madrid 28850, Spain

[4] Univ Rovira & Virgili, IPHES COMPATHEVOL, Inst Catala Paleoecol Humana & Evolucio Social, E-43007 Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain

[5] ICREA, Barcelona 08010, Catalonia, Spain

[6] Univ Rovira & Virgili, Dept Engn Quim, E-43007 Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain

关键词: Diet contiguity;    Ecological networks;    Food-web structure;    Niche dimension;    Species size;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jtbi.2013.06.004

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

In food webs, the degree of intervality of consumers' diets is an indicator of the number of dimensions that are necessary to determine the niche of a species. Previous studies modeling food-web structure have shown that real networks are compatible with a high degree of diet contiguity. However, current models are also compatible with the opposite, namely that species' diets have relatively low contiguity. This is particularly true when one takes species' body size as a proxy for niche value, in which case the indeterminacy of diet contiguities provided by current models can be large. We propose a model that enables us to narrow down the range of possible values of diet contiguity. According to this model, we find that diet contiguity not only can be high, but must be high when species are ranked in ascending order of body size. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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