TY  - THES
A1  - Boit, Alice
T1  - Mechanistic theory and modeling of complex ecological networks
Y1  - 2012
CY  - Potsdam
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Kefi, Sonia
A1  - Berlow, Eric L.
A1  - Wieters, Evie A.
A1  - Navarrete, Sergio A.
A1  - Petchey, Owen L.
A1  - Wood, Spencer A.
A1  - Boit, Alice
A1  - Joppa, Lucas N.
A1  - Lafferty, Kevin D.
A1  - Williams, Richard J.
A1  - Martinez, Neo D.
A1  - Menge, Bruce A.
A1  - Blanchette, Carol A.
A1  - Iles, Alison C.
A1  - Brose, Ulrich
T1  - More than a meal ... integrating non-feeding interactions into food webs
JF  - Ecology letters
N2  - Organisms eating each other are only one of many types of well documented and important interactions among species. Other such types include habitat modification, predator interference and facilitation. However, ecological network research has been typically limited to either pure food webs or to networks of only a few (<3) interaction types. The great diversity of non-trophic interactions observed in nature has been poorly addressed by ecologists and largely excluded from network theory. Herein, we propose a conceptual framework that organises this diversity into three main functional classes defined by how they modify specific parameters in a dynamic food web model. This approach provides a path forward for incorporating non-trophic interactions in traditional food web models and offers a new perspective on tackling ecological complexity that should stimulate both theoretical and empirical approaches to understanding the patterns and dynamics of diverse species interactions in nature.
KW  - Ecological network
KW  - ecosystem engineering
KW  - facilitation
KW  - food web
KW  - interaction modification
KW  - non-trophic interactions
KW  - trophic interactions
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01732.x
SN  - 1461-023X
VL  - 15
IS  - 4
SP  - 291
EP  - 300
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Mulder, Christian
A1  - Boit, Alice
A1  - Mori, Shigeta
A1  - Vonk, J. Arie
A1  - Dyer, Scott D.
A1  - Faggiano, Leslie
A1  - Geisen, Stefan
A1  - Gonzalez, Angelica L.
A1  - Kaspari, Michael
A1  - Lavorel, Sandra
A1  - Marquet, Pablo A.
A1  - Rossberg, Axel G.
A1  - Sterner, Robert W.
A1  - Voigt, Winfried
A1  - Wall, Diana H.
ED  - Jacob, U
ED  - Woodward, G
T1  - Distributional (In)Congruence of Biodiversity-Ecosystem Functioning
JF  - Advances in ecological research
JF  - Advances in Ecological Research
N2  - The majority of research on biodiversity ecosystem functioning in laboratories has concentrated on a few traits, but there is increasing evidence from the field that functional diversity controls ecosystem functioning more often than does species number. Given the importance of traits as predictors of niche complementarity and community structures, we (1) examine how the diversity sensu lato of forest trees, freshwater fishes and soil invertebrates might support ecosystem functioning and (2) discuss the relevance of productive biota for monophyletic assemblages (taxocenes).
 In terrestrial ecosystems, correlating traits to abiotic factors is complicated by the appropriate choice of body-size distributions. Angiosperm and gymnosperm trees, for example, show metabolic incongruences in their respiration rates despite their pronounced macroecological scaling. Scaling heterotrophic organisms within their monophyletic assemblages seems more difficult than scaling autotrophs: in contrast to the generally observed decline of mass-specific metabolic rates with body mass within metazoans, soil organisms such as protozoans show opposite mass-specific trends.
 At the community level, the resource demand of metazoans shapes multitrophic interactions. Hence, population densities and their food web relationships reflect functional diversity, but the influence of biodiversity on stability and ecosystem functioning remains less clear. We focused on fishes in 18 riverine food webs, where the ratio of primary versus secondary extinctions (hereafter, 'extinction partitioning') summarizes the responses of fish communities to primary species loss (deletions) and its consequences. Based on extinction partitioning, our high-diversity food webs were just as (or even more) vulnerable to extinctions as low-diversity food webs.
 Our analysis allows us to assess consequences of the relocation or removal of fish species and to help with decision-making in sustainable river management. The study highlights that the topology of food webs (and not simply taxonomic diversity) plays a greater role in stabilizing the food web and enhancing ecological services than is currently acknowledged.
Y1  - 2012
SN  - 978-0-12-396992-7
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-396992-7.00001-0
SN  - 0065-2504
VL  - 46
SP  - 1
EP  - 88
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - San Diego
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Boit, Alice
A1  - Martinez, Neo D.
A1  - Williams, Richard J.
A1  - Gaedke, Ursula
T1  - Mechanistic theory and modelling of complex food-web dynamics in Lake Constance
JF  - Ecology letters
N2  - Mechanistic understanding of consumer-resource dynamics is critical to predicting the effects of global change on ecosystem structure, function and services. Such understanding is severely limited by mechanistic models inability to reproduce the dynamics of multiple populations interacting in the field. We surpass this limitation here by extending general consumer-resource network theory to the complex dynamics of a specific ecosystem comprised by the seasonal biomass and production patterns in a pelagic food web of a large, well-studied lake. We parameterised our allometric trophic network model of 24 guilds and 107 feeding relationships using the lakes food web structure, initial spring biomasses and body-masses. Adding activity respiration, the detrital loop, minimal abiotic forcing, prey resistance and several empirically observed rates substantially increased the model's fit to the observed seasonal dynamics and the size-abundance distribution. This process illuminates a promising approach towards improving food-web theory and dynamic models of specific habitats.
KW  - Allometric Trophic Network model
KW  - community ecology
KW  - food web
KW  - multi-trophic dynamics
KW  - seasonal plankton succession
Y1  - 2012
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1461-0248.2012.01777.x
SN  - 1461-023X
VL  - 15
IS  - 6
SP  - 594
EP  - 602
PB  - Wiley-Blackwell
CY  - Hoboken
ER  -