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68 results for “Food web structure”
Data from: Exceptional body sizes but typical trophic structure in a Pleistocene food web
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Data from: Do differences in food web structure between organic and conventional farms affect the ecosystem service of pest control?
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Data from: Experimentally reducing species abundance indirectly affects food web structure and robustness
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Data from: Seasonal changes in plankton food web structure and carbon dioxide flux from Southern California reservoirs
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Data from: Climate change alters the structure of arctic marine food webs due to poleward shifts of boreal generalists
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Data from: The effects of food web structure on ecosystem function exceeds those of precipitation
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Data from: Exposing the structure of an Arctic food web
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Data from: Effects of spatial scale of sampling on food web structure
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Predator population size structure alters consumption of prey from epigeic and grazing food webs
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Data from: Food-web structure varies along environmental gradients in a high-latitude marine ecosystem
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Species diversity and food web structure jointly shape natural biological control in agricultural landscapes
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Data from: Highly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinction
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A modified niche model for generating food webs with stage-structured consumers: The stabilizing effects of life-history stages on complex food webs
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Changes in stream food web structure across a gradient of acid mine drainage increases local community stability
<p>Understanding what makes food webs stable has long been a goal of ecologists. Topological structure and the distribution and magnitude of interaction strengths in food webs have been shown to confer important stabilizing properties. However, our understanding of how variable species interactions affect food web structure and stability is still in its infancy. Anthropogenic stress, such as acid mine drainage, is likely to place severe limitations on the food web structures possible due to changes in community composition and body mass distributions. Here, we used mechanistic models to infer food web structure and quantify stability in streams across a gradient of acid mine drainage. Multiple food webs were iterated for each community based on species pairwise interaction probabilities, in order to incorporate the variability of realistic food web structure. We found that food web structure was altered systematically with a 32-fold decrease in the number of links and a 2-fold increase in connectance across the gradient. Stability generally increased 6-fold with increasing acid mine drainage stress, regardless of how interaction strengths were estimated. However, the distribution of the stability measure, s, for some impacted communities separated into clusters of higher and lower magnitude depending on how interaction strengths were estimated. Management and restoration of impacted sites needs to consider their increased stability, as this may have important implications for the re-colonization of desirable species. Furthermore, active species introductions may be required to overcome the internal ecological inertia of affected communities.</p>
Data from: Structure and functioning of intertidal food webs along an avian flyway: a comparative approach using stable isotopes
Food webs and trophic dynamics of coastal systems have been the focus of intense research throughout the world, as they prove to be critical in understanding ecosystem processes and functions. However, very few studies have undertaken a quantitative comparison of entire food webs from a key consumer perspective across a broad geographical area, limiting relevant comparisons among systems with distinct biotic and abiotic components. We investigate the structure and functioning of food webs in four tidal ecosystems of international importance for migratory shorebirds along the East Atlantic Flyway: Tejo estuary in Portugal, Sidi Moussa in Morocco, Banc d'Arguin in Mauritania and Bijagós archipelago in Guinea-Bissau. Basal food sources, shorebirds and their prey (benthic invertebrates) were sampled in all areas, and Bayesian stable isotope mixing models and community-wide metrics were used in a comparative analysis among areas. Significant differences among study areas were found in the structure of food webs, as well as in the relative importance of basal resource pools supporting each food web. Overall, the food web of Banc d'Arguin was characterized by lower trophic diversity and higher functional redundancy than the other sites. This result might be explained by the low number of trophic pathways of organic matter transfer in this seagrass-dominated system which, as a fossil estuary, lacks inputs from both freshwater and nutrient-rich offshore oceanic waters. Structure of shorebird communities was consistent with the main organizational patterns found for each food web, highlighting the less diverse character of the community of Banc d'Arguin. At Banc d'Arguin and Bijagós archipelago, which displayed the smallest and largest isotopic niche widths in bird assemblage, respectively, mean niche overlap among species was low, suggesting high interspecific partitioning in resource use. Tropical systems typically offer comparatively lower harvestable prey biomass for shorebirds and might thus strengthen interspecific competition, leading to low niche overlap among species. Our study reveals relevant differences in the structure of food webs and shorebird communities in coastal areas along an avian flyway. While differences in trophic redundancy of food webs point to distinct levels of ecosystem resilience, contrasts in the organization of shorebird communities highlight the plasticity in the foraging behaviour of species inhabiting areas with distinct environmental conditions.
Data from: Parasites affect food web structure primarily through increased diversity and complexity
Comparative research on food web structure has revealed generalities in trophic organization, produced simple models, and allowed assessment of robustness to species loss. These studies have mostly focused on free-living species. Recent research has suggested that inclusion of parasites alters structure. We assess whether such changes in network structure result from unique roles and traits of parasites or from changes to diversity and complexity. We analyzed seven highly resolved food webs that include metazoan parasite data. Our analyses show that adding parasites usually increases link density and connectance (simple measures of complexity), particularly when including concomitant links (links from predators to parasites of their prey). However, we clarify prior claims that parasites "dominate" food web links. Although parasites can be involved in a majority of links, in most cases classic predation links outnumber classic parasitism links. Regarding network structure, observed changes in degree distributions, 14 commonly studied metrics, and link probabilities are consistent with scale-dependent changes in structure associated with changes in diversity and complexity. Parasite and free-living species thus have similar effects on these aspects of structure. However, two changes point to unique roles of parasites. First, adding parasites and concomitant links strongly alters the frequency of most motifs of interactions among three taxa, reflecting parasites' roles as resources for predators of their hosts, driven by trophic intimacy with their hosts. Second, compared to free-living consumers, many parasites' feeding niches appear broader and less contiguous, which may reflect complex life cycles and small body sizes. This study provides new insights about generic versus unique impacts of parasites on food web structure, extends the generality of food web theory, gives a more rigorous framework for assessing the impact of any species on trophic organization, identifies limitations of current food web models, and provides direction for future structural and dynamical models.
Data from: Unravelling the role of allochthonous aquatic resources to food web structure in a tropical riparian forest
1. The role of matter and energy flow across ecosystem boundaries for subsidized consumer populations is well known. However, little is known on the effects of allochthonous subsidies on food web structure and trophic niche dimensions of consumers in the tropics. 2. We excluded allochthonous aquatic insects from tropical streams using greenhouse-type exclosures to test the influence of aquatic allochthonous subsidies on the trophic structure and niche dimensions of terrestrial predators using stable isotope methods. 3. In exclosure treatments, abundance and biomass of terrestrial predators, and biomass of phytophages, decreased and increased, respectively. Vegetation-living predators were more responsive to allochthonous inputs than those living on the ground. Overall, lower availability of allochthonous inputs did not affect community-wide metrics and niche width of predators. However, the niche width of some spider families had very low overlap between treatments, and others had wider isotopic niches in the control than exclusion treatment. Most of the C and N in predators living in control stretches came from aquatic subsidies, and those predators living in exclusion treatments switched their diets to terrestrial sources, showing a preference of predators for allochthonous subsidies. 4. Our results suggest that allochthonous subsidies are also relevant to tropical fauna living upon vegetation. Moreover, allochthonous resources may amplify the niche dimension of certain predators, or considerably change the trophic niche of others. Our study highlights the importance of including modern isotopic tools in elucidating the role of allochthonous resources on the patterns of trophic structure and niche dimensions of consumers from donor ecosystems.
Data from: Phylogenetic composition of host plant communities drives plant-herbivore food web structure
1. Insects tend to feed on related hosts. The phylogenetic composition of host plant communities thus plays a prominent role in determining insect specialization, food web structure, and diversity. Previous studies showed a high preference of insect herbivores for congeneric and confamilial hosts suggesting that some levels of host plant relationships may play more prominent role that others. 2. We aim to quantify the effects of host phylogeny on the structure of quantitative plant-herbivore food webs. Further, we identify specific patterns in three insect guilds with different life histories and discuss the role of host plant phylogeny in maintaining their diversity. 3. We studied herbivore assemblages in three temperate forests in Japan and the Czech Republic. Sampling from a canopy crane, a cherry picker and felled trees allowed a complete census of plant-herbivore interactions within three 0.1 ha plots for leaf chewing larvae, miners, and gallers. We analyzed the effects of host phylogeny by comparing the observed food webs with randomized models of host selection. 4. Larval leaf chewers exhibited high generality at all three sites, whereas gallers and miners were almost exclusively monophagous. Leaf chewer generality dropped rapidly when older host lineages (5-80 myr) were collated into a single lineage but only decreased slightly when the most closely related congeneric hosts were collated. This shows that leaf chewer generality has been maintained by feeding on confamilial hosts while only a few herbivores were shared between more distant plant lineages and, surprisingly, between some congeneric hosts. In contrast, miner and galler generality was maintained mainly by the terminal nodes of the host phylogeny and dropped immediately after collating congeneric hosts into single lineages. 5. We show that not all levels of host plant phylogeny are equal in their effect on structuring plant-herbivore food webs. In the case of generalist guilds, it is the phylogeny of deeper plant lineages that drives the food web structure whereas the terminal relationships play minor roles. In contrast, the specialization and abundance of monophagous guilds is affected mainly by the terminal parts of the plant phylogeny and does not generally reflect deeper host phylogeny.
Data for: Food Web Structure Significantly Affects the Body Condition and Survival of an Amphibian Intraguild Predator
<p>Data for upcoming publication</p>
Data from: The importance of landscape and spatial structure for hymenopteran-based food webs in an agro-ecosystem
1. Understanding the environmental factors that structure biodiversity and food webs among communities is central to assess and mitigate the impact of landscape changes. 2. Wildflower strips are ecological compensation areas established in farmland to increase pollination services and biological control of crop pests, and to conserve insect diversity. They are arranged in networks in order to favour high species richness and abundance of the fauna. 3. We describe results from experimental wildflower strips in a fragmented agricultural landscape, comparing the importance of landscape, of spatial arrangement, and of vegetation on the diversity and abundance of trap-nesting bees, wasps and their enemies, and the structure of their food webs. 4. The proportion of forest cover close to the wildflower strips and the landscape heterogeneity stood out as the most influential landscape elements, resulting in a more complex trap nest community with higher abundance and richness of hosts, and with more links between species in the food webs and a higher diversity of interactions. We disentangled the underlying mechanisms for variation in these quantitative food-web metrics. 5. We conclude that in order to increase the diversity and abundance of pollinators and biological control agents and to favour a potentially stable community of cavity nesting hymenoptera in wildflower strips, more investment is needed in the conservation and establishment of forest habitats within agro-ecosystems, as a reservoir of beneficial insect populations.
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Allen Brain Atlas
Allen Brain Atlas is an Allen Institute collection of brain map atlases, datasets, APIs, and analysis tools covering mouse, human, and non-human primate brain resources.
Annotated Behaviour and Observability Dataset (ABODe)
ABODe is a University of Edinburgh DataShare dataset for behavior classification in group-housed mice using home-cage video, identities, bounding boxes, ground-plate positions, and annotator labels.
DANDI Archive for NWB datasets
DANDI is a BRAIN Initiative archive for publishing and sharing neurophysiology data, including electrophysiology, optophysiology, and behavioral data packaged as NWB and related standards.
International Brain Laboratory public data
The International Brain Laboratory public data releases expose standardized mouse decision-making experiments, including Neuropixels recordings, widefield calcium imaging, behavior, and session metadata accessed through the ONE API.
OpenNeuro
OpenNeuro is a free, open platform for sharing neuroimaging datasets, with public search, dataset pages, and download paths for web, S3, DataLad, and the OpenNeuro CLI.