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- Berg, Sofia, et al.
(författare)
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Using sensitivity analysis to identify keystone species and keystone links in size-based food webs
- 2011
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : Wiley. - 0030-1299 .- 1600-0706. ; 120:4, s. 510-519
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Human-induced alterations in the birth and mortality rates of species and in the strength of interactions within and between species can lead to changes in the structure and resilience of ecological communities. Recent research points to the importance of considering the distribution of body sizes of species when exploring the response of communities to such perturbations. Here, we present a new size-based approach for assessing the sensitivity and elasticity of community structure (species equilibrium abundances) and resilience (rate of return to equilibrium) to changes in the intrinsic growth rate of species and in the strengths of species interactions. We apply this approach on two natural systems, the pelagic communities of the Baltic Sea and Lake Vättern, to illustrate how it can be used to identify potential keystone species and keystone links. We find that the keystone status of a species is closely linked to its body size. The analysis also suggests that communities are structurally and dynamically more sensitive to changes in the effects of prey on their consumers than in the effects of consumers on their prey. Moreover, we discuss how community sensitivity analysis can be used to study and compare the fragility of communities with different body size distributions by measuring the mean sensitivity or elasticity over all species or all interaction links in a community. We believe that the community sensitivity analysis developed here holds some promise for identifying species and links that are critical for the structural and dynamic robustness of ecological communities.
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| 7. |
- Cirtwill, Alyssa, et al.
(författare)
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Between-year changes in community composition shape species' roles in an Arctic plant-pollinator network
- 2018
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : WILEY. - 0030-1299 .- 1600-0706. ; 127:8, s. 1163-1176
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Inter-annual turnover in community composition can affect the richness and functioning of ecological communities. If incoming and outgoing species do not interact with the same partners, ecological functions such as pollination may be disrupted. Here, we explore the extent to which turnover affects species' roles - as defined based on their participation in different motifs positions - in a series of temporally replicated plant-pollinator networks from high-Arctic Zackenberg, Greenland. We observed substantial turnover in the plant and pollinator assemblages, combined with significant variation in species' roles between networks. Variation in the roles of plants and pollinators tended to increase with the amount of community turnover, although a negative interaction between turnover in the plant and pollinator assemblages complicated this trend for the roles of pollinators. This suggests that increasing turnover in the future will result in changes to the roles of plants and likely those of pollinators. These changing roles may in turn affect the functioning or stability of this pollination network.
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| 8. |
- Digel, Christoph, et al.
(författare)
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Unravelling the complex structure of forest soil food webs: higher omnivory and more trophic levels
- 2014
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : Wiley / Nordic Ecological Society. - 0030-1299 .- 1600-0706. ; 123:10, s. 1157-1172
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Food web topologies depict the community structure as distributions of feeding interactions across populations. Although the soil ecosystem provides important functions for aboveground ecosystems, data on complex soil food webs is notoriously scarce, most likely due to the difficulty of sampling and characterizing the system. To fill this gap we assembled the complex food webs of 48 forest soil communities. The food webs comprise 89 to 168 taxa and 729 to 3344 feeding interactions. The feeding links were established by combining several molecular methods (stable isotope, fatty acid and molecular gut content analyses) with feeding trials and literature data. First, we addressed whether soil food webs (n = 48) differ significantly from those of other ecosystem types (aquatic and terrestrial aboveground, n = 77) by comparing 22 food web parameters. We found that our soil food webs are characterized by many omnivorous and cannibalistic species, more trophic chains and intraguild-predation motifs than other food webs and high average and maximum trophic levels. Despite this, we also found that soil food webs have a similar connectance as other ecosystems, but interestingly a higher link density and clustering coefficient. These differences in network structure to other ecosystem types may be a result of ecosystem specific constraints on hunting and feeding characteristics of the species that emerge as network parameters at the food-web level. In a second analysis of land-use effects, we found significant but only small differences of soil food web structure between different beech and coniferous forest types, which may be explained by generally strong selection effects of the soil that are independent of human land use. Overall, our study has unravelled some systematic structures of soil food-webs, which extends our mechanistic understanding how environmental characteristics of the soil ecosystem determine patterns at the community level.
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| 9. |
- Griesser, Michael, et al.
(författare)
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Experience buffers extrinsic mortality in a group-living bird species
- 2017
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : Wiley. - 0030-1299 .- 1600-0706. ; 126:9, s. 1258-1268
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Extrinsic mortality has a strong impact on the evolution of life-histories, prey morphology and behavioural adaptations, but for many animals the causes of mortality are poorly understood. Predation is an important driver of extrinsic mortality and mobile animals form groups in response to increased predation risk. Furthermore, in many species juveniles suffer higher mortality than older individuals, which may reflect a lower phenotypic quality, lower competitiveness, or a lack of antipredator or foraging skills. Here we assessed the causes of mortality for 371 radio tagged Siberian jays. This sedentary bird species lives in family groups that contain a breeding pair as well as related and unrelated non-breeders. Ninety-five percent of death were due to predation (n = 59 out of 62 individuals) and most individuals were killed by Accipiter hawks. Multivariate Cox proportional hazards models showed that non-breeders had a lower survival than breeders, but only in territories in managed forest with little visual cover. Examining breeders, only sex influenced survival with males having a lower survival than females. For non-breeders, juveniles had lower survival than older non-breeders, and those on managed territories had lower survival than those on unmanaged territories. Additionally, a low feather quality reduced the survival probability of non-breeders only. Thus, living on managed territories and having a low feature quality affected only non-breeders, particularly juveniles. These findings add to previous research demonstrating that juvenile Siberian jays acquire critical antipredator skills from experienced group members. Thus, experience can buffer extrinsic mortality, highlighting that group living not only provides safety in numbers, but also provide social opportunities to learn critical life-skills.
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- Häussler, Johanna, et al.
(författare)
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Invasive spread in meta-food-webs depends on landscape structure, fertilization and species characteristics
- 2021
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Ingår i: Oikos. - : John Wiley & Sons. - 0030-1299 .- 1600-0706. ; 130:8, s. 1257-1271
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Land use change and biological invasions collectively threaten biodiversity. Yet, few studies have addressed how altering the landscape structure and nutrient supply can promote biological invasions and particularly invasive spread (the spread of an invader from the place of introduction), or asked whether and how these factors interact with biotic interactions and invader properties. We here bridge this knowledge gap by providing a holistic network-based approach. Our approach combines a trophic network model with a spatial network model allowing us to test which combinations of abiotic and biotic factors can facilitate invasions and in particular invasive spread in food webs. We numerically simulated 6300 single-species invasions in clustered and random landscapes at different levels of nutrient supply. In total, our simulation experiment yielded 69% successful invasions - 71% in clustered landscapes and 66% in random landscapes, with the proportion of successful invasions increasing with nutrient supply. However, invasive spread was generally higher in random than in clustered landscapes. The latter can facilitate invasive spread within a habitat cluster, but prevent invasive spread between clusters. Low nutrient levels generally prevented the establishment of invasive species and their subsequent spread. However, successful invaders could have more severe impacts as they contribute more to total biomass density and species richness under such conditions. Good dispersal abilities drive the broad-scale spread of invasive species in fragmented landscapes. Our approach makes an important contribution towards a better understanding of what combination of landscape and invader properties can facilitate or prevent invasive spread in natural ecosystems. This should allow ecologists to more effectively predict and manage biological invasions.
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