Identifying a common backbone of interactions underlying food webs from different ecosystems

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dc.contributor.authorMora BB
dc.contributor.authorGravel D
dc.contributor.authorGilarranz LJ
dc.contributor.authorPoisot T
dc.contributor.authorStouffer DB
dc.date.accessioned2018-11-20T23:44:06Z
dc.date.available2018-11-20T23:44:06Z
dc.date.issued2018en
dc.date.updated2018-10-31T19:45:19Z
dc.description.abstract© 2018 The Author(s). Although the structure of empirical food webs can differ between ecosystems, there is growing evidence of multiple ways in which they also exhibit common topological properties. To reconcile these contrasting observations, we postulate the existence of a backbone of interactions underlying all ecological networks - a common substructure within every network comprised of species playing similar ecological roles - and a periphery of species whose idiosyncrasies help explain the differences between networks. To test this conjecture, we introduce a new approach to investigate the structural similarity of 411 food webs from multiple environments and biomes. We first find significant differences in the way species in different ecosystems interact with each other. Despite these differences, we then show that there is compelling evidence of a common backbone of interactions underpinning all food webs. We expect that identifying a backbone of interactions will shed light on the rules driving assembly of different ecological communities.en
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-05056-0
dc.identifier.issn2041-1723
dc.identifier.issn2041-1723
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10092/16239
dc.languageEnglish
dc.language.isoen
dc.rightsOpen Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2018en
dc.subject.anzsrcFields of Research::31 - Biological sciences::3103 - Ecology::310302 - Community ecology (excl. invasive species ecology)en
dc.titleIdentifying a common backbone of interactions underlying food webs from different ecosystemsen
dc.typeJournal Articleen
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