Regime shifts in marine communities: a complex systems perspective on food web dynamics

Regime shifts in marine communities : a complex systems perspective on food web dynamics

Yletyinen, Johanna (author): Stockholms universitet,Stockholm Resilience Centre

Weigel, Benjamin (author)

Nordström, Marie C. (author)

Bonsdorff, Erik (author)

Blenckner, Thorsten (author): Stockholms universitet,Stockholm Resilience Centre

(creator_code:org_t)

2016-02-24
2016
English.
In: Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Biological Sciences. - : The Royal Society. - 0962-8452 .- 1471-2954. ; 283:1825

Related links:: https://doi.org/10.1...; show more...; https://royalsociety...; https://urn.kb.se/re...; https://doi.org/10.1...; show less...

Abstract Subject headings

Species composition and habitats are changing at unprecedented rates in the world's oceans, potentially causing entire food webs to shift to structurally and functionally different regimes. Despite the severity of these regime shifts, elucidating the precise nature of their underlying processes has remained difficult. We address this challenge with a new analytic approach to detect and assess the relative strength of different driving processes in food webs. Our study draws on complexity theory, and integrates the network-centric exponential random graph modelling (ERGM) framework developed within the social sciences with community ecology. In contrast to previous research, this approach makes clear assumptions of direction of causality and accommodates a dynamic perspective on the emergence of food webs. We apply our approach to analysing food webs of the Baltic Sea before and after a previously reported regime shift. Our results show that the dominant food web processes have remained largely the same, although we detect changes in their magnitudes. The results indicate that the reported regime shift may not be a system-wide shift, but instead involve a limited number of species. Our study emphasizes the importance of community-wide analysis on marine regime shifts and introduces a novel approach to examine food webs.

By the author/editor: Yletyinen, Johan ...; Bodin, Örjan; Weigel, Benjamin; Nordström, Marie ...; Bonsdorff, Erik; Blenckner, Thors ...

About the subject

Kungliga biblioteket hanterar dina personuppgifter i enlighet med EU:s dataskyddsförordning (2018), GDPR. Läs mer om hur det funkar här.
Så här hanterar KB dina uppgifter vid användning av denna tjänst.