TY  - JOUR
A1  - Riede, Jens O.
A1  - Binzer, Amrei
A1  - Brose, Ulrich
A1  - de Castro, Francisco
A1  - Curtsdotter, Alva
A1  - Rall, Bjoern C.
A1  - Ekloef, Anna
T1  - Size-based food web characteristics govern the response to species extinctions
JF  - Basic and applied ecology : Journal of the Gesellschaft für Ökologie
N2  - How ecological communities react to species extinctions is a long-standing yet current question in ecology. The species constituting the basic units of ecosystems interact with each other forming complex networks of trophic relationships and the characteristics of these networks are highly important for the consequences of species extinction. Here we take a more general approach and analyze a broad range of network characteristics and their role in determining food web susceptibility to secondary extinctions. We extend previous studies, that have focused on the consequences of topological and dynamical food web parameters for food web robustness, by also defining network-wide characteristics depending on the relationships between the distribution of species body masses and other species characteristics. We use a bioenergetic dynamical model to simulate realistically structured model food webs that differ in their structural and dynamical properties as well as their size structure. In order to measure food web robustness we calculated the proportion of species going secondarily extinct. A multiple regression analysis was then used to fit a general model relating the proportion of species going secondarily extinct to the measured food web properties. Our results show that there are multiple factors from all three groups of food web characteristics that affect food web robustness. However, we find the most striking effect was related to the body mass abundance relationship which points to the importance of body mass relationships for food web stability.
KW  - Body mass-abundance
KW  - Connectance
KW  - Food web robustness
KW  - Hill exponent
KW  - Size structure
KW  - Secondary extinctions
Y1  - 2011
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2011.09.006
SN  - 1439-1791
VL  - 12
IS  - 7
SP  - 581
EP  - 589
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Jena
ER  -