Authors
Ulrich Brose, Phillippe Archambault, Andrew D Barnes, Louis-Felix Bersier, Thomas Boy, João Canning-Clode, Erminia Conti, Marta Dias, Christoph Digel, Awantha Dissanayake, Augusto AV Flores, Katarina Fussmann, Benoit Gauzens, Clare Gray, Johanna Häussler, Myriam R Hirt, Ute Jacob, Malte Jochum, Sonia Kéfi, Orla McLaughlin, Muriel M MacPherson, Ellen Latz, Katrin Layer-Dobra, Pierre Legagneux, Yuanheng Li, Carolina Madeira, Neo D Martinez, Vanessa Mendonça, Christian Mulder, Sergio A Navarrete, Eoin J O’Gorman, David Ott, José Paula, Daniel Perkins, Denise Piechnik, Ivan Pokrovsky, David Raffaelli, Björn C Rall, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Remo Ryser, Ana Silva, Esra H Sohlström, Natalia Sokolova, Murray SA Thompson, Ross M Thompson, Fanny Vermandele, Catarina Vinagre, Shaopeng Wang, Jori M Wefer, Richard J Williams, Evie Wieters, Guy Woodward, Alison C Iles
Publication date
2019/6
Journal
Nature Ecology & Evolution
Volume
3
Issue
6
Pages
919-927
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Description
Predator–prey interactions in natural ecosystems generate complex food webs that have a simple universal body-size architecture where predators are systematically larger than their prey. Food-web theory shows that the highest predator–prey body-mass ratios found in natural food webs may be especially important because they create weak interactions with slow dynamics that stabilize communities against perturbations and maintain ecosystem functioning. Identifying these vital interactions in real communities typically requires arduous identification of interactions in complex food webs. Here, we overcome this obstacle by developing predator-trait models to predict average body-mass ratios based on a database comprising 290 food webs from freshwater, marine and terrestrial ecosystems across all continents. We analysed how species traits constrain body-size architecture by changing the slope of the …
Scholar articles
U Brose, P Archambault, AD Barnes, LF Bersier, T Boy… - Nature ecology & evolution, 2019