Consistent role of weak and strong interactions in high- and low-diversity trophic food webs

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 7; no. 1; p. 11180
• Main Authors: Gellner, Gabriel, McCann, Kevin S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 12-04-2016; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 631/158/670; 631/158/853/2006; Biodiversity; Food Chain; Humanities and Social Sciences; Models, Theoretical; multidisciplinary; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms11180

The growing realization of a looming biodiversity crisis has inspired considerable progress in the quest to link biodiversity, structure and ecosystem function. Here we construct a method that bridges low- and high-diversity approaches to food web theory by elucidating the connection between the stability of the basic building block of food webs and the mean stability properties of large random food web networks. Applying this theoretical framework to common food web models reveals two key findings. First, in almost all cases, high-diversity food web models yield a stability relationship between weak and strong interactions that are compatible in every way to simple low-diversity models. And second, the models that generate the recently discovered phenomena of being purely stabilized by increasing interaction strength correspond to the biologically implausible assumption of perfect interaction strength symmetry.
High-and low-diversity food webs are thought to differ in their structural stability. Here, the authors use a method that bridges both levels of diversity to show that stability relationships and interaction strength can be consistent between simple and complex trophic networks.