Evolutionary Conservation of Species’ Roles in Food Webs
Untangling the Web
Interspecific interactions link species within complex trophic and nontrophic webs (see the Perspective by Lewinsohn and Cagnolo). Theoretical work has suggested that certain characteristics of species, or even interactions, may predispose them to extinction from a network. Aizen et al. (p. 1486) provide empirical evidence that plant-pollinator interactions are lost nonrandomly following habitat reduction in isolated hills in the Argentine pampas. Some types of interaction were more vulnerable to disruption than others, particularly when the specialization of the interacting was high and when the interactions were infrequent. Stouffer et al. (p. 1489) applied network theory to predict the dynamical importance of species across different food webs. Characteristic three-node motifs were identified, and species were characterized according to the relative frequencies with which they occupied unique positions within the motifs. These relative frequencies and the dynamic importance of the motifs were then used to identify a species-level importance within a food web.
Abstract
Studies of ecological networks (the web of interactions between species in a community) demonstrate an intricate link between a community’s structure and its long-term viability. It remains unclear, however, how much a community’s persistence depends on the identities of the species present, or how much the role played by each species varies as a function of the community in which it is found. We measured species’ roles by studying how species are embedded within the overall network and the subsequent dynamic implications. Using data from 32 empirical food webs, we find that species’ roles and dynamic importance are inherent species attributes and can be extrapolated across communities on the basis of taxonomic classification alone. Our results illustrate the variability of roles across species and communities and the relative importance of distinct species groups when attempting to conserve ecological communities.
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Published In
Science
Volume 335 | Issue 6075
23 March 2012
23 March 2012
Copyright
Copyright © 2012, American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Submission history
Received: 14 November 2011
Accepted: 14 February 2012
Published in print: 23 March 2012
Acknowledgments
D.B.S. acknowledges the support of a Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas–Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Juan de la Cierva Fellowship from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MICINN), Spain. M.S.P. acknowledges the support of grant FIS2010-18639 from the MICINN, Spain; a Research Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation; and grant PIRG-GA-2010-268342 from the European Union. M.I.S. acknowledges the support of a W. M. Keck Foundation grant. J.B. acknowledges the support of the European Research Council under the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) through an Advanced Grant (grant agreement 268543). A list of references from which the food web data can be obtained is found in table S1. All figures were generated with PyGrace (http://pygrace.sourceforge.net).
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