Interaction strength combinations and the overfishing of a marine food web

被引:476
作者
Bascompte, J
Melián, CJ
Sala, E
机构
[1] CSIC, Estac Biol Donana, Integrat Biol Grp, E-41080 Seville, Spain
[2] Univ Calif San Diego, Scripps Inst Oceanog, Ctr Maine Biodivers & Conservat, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA
关键词
community stability; omnivory; trophic chain; trophic cascade; quantitative networks;
D O I
10.1073/pnas.0501562102
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
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 nonrandomly 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 accompanied 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.
引用
收藏
页码:5443 / 5447
页数:5
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