TY  - JOUR
A1  - Binzer, Amrei
A1  - Brose, Ulrich
A1  - Curtsdotter, Alva
A1  - Ekloef, Anna
A1  - Rall, Bjoern C.
A1  - Riede, Jens O.
A1  - de Castro, Francisco
T1  - The susceptibility of species to extinctions in model communities
JF  - Basic and applied ecology : Journal of the Gesellschaft für Ökologie
N2  - Despite the fact that the loss of a species from a community has the potential to cause a dramatic decline in biodiversity, for example through cascades of secondary extinctions, little is known about the factors contributing to the extinction risk of any particular species. Here we expand earlier modeling approaches using a dynamic food-web model that accounts for bottom-up as well as top-down effects. We investigate what factors influence a species' extinction risk and time to extinction of the non-persistent species.
 We identified three basic properties that affect a species' risk of extinction. The highest extinction risk is born by species with (1) low energy input (e.g. high trophic level), (2) susceptibility to the loss of energy pathways (e.g. specialists with few prey species) and (3) dynamic instability (e.g. low Hill exponent and reliance on homogeneous energy channels when feeding on similarly sized prey).
 Interestingly, and different from field studies, we found that the trophic level and not the body mass of a species influences its extinction risk. On the other hand, body mass is the single most important factor determining the time to extinction of a species, resulting in small species dying first. This suggests that in the field the trophic level might have more influence on the extinction risk than presently recognized.
KW  - Extinction risk
KW  - Allometry
KW  - Dynamic modeling
Y1  - 2011
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2011.09.002
SN  - 1439-1791
VL  - 12
IS  - 7
SP  - 590
EP  - 599
PB  - Elsevier
CY  - Jena
ER  -