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Who Is Where in Marine Food Webs?:A Trait-Based Analysis of Network Positions
Endrédi, Anett Patonai, Katalin Podani, János Libralato, Simone Jordán, Ferenc
Endrédi, Anett
Patonai, Katalin
Podani, János
Libralato, Simone
Jordán, Ferenc
Title / Series / Name
Publication Volume
8
Publication Issue
Pages
Editors
Keywords
SDG 14 - Life Below Water
Files
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Jordan-Ferenc2_2021.pdf
Adobe PDF, 2.53 MB
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14018/28776
Abstract
Networks of trophic interactions provide a lot of information on the functioning of marine ecosystems. Beyond feeding habits, three additional traits (mobility, size, and habitat) of various organisms can complement this trophic view. The combination of traits and food web positions are studied here on a large food web database. The aim is a better description and understanding of ecological roles of organisms and the identification of the most important keystone species. This may contribute to develop better ecological indicators (e.g., keystoneness) and help in the interpretation of food web models. We use food web data from the Ecopath with Ecosim (EwE) database for 92 aquatic ecosystems. We quantify the network position of organisms by 18 topological indices (measuring centrality, hierarchy, and redundancy) and consider their three, categorical traits (e.g., for mobility: sessile, drifter, limited mobility, and mobile). Relationships are revealed by multivariate analysis. We found that topological indices belong to six different categories and some of them nicely separate various trait categories. For example, benthic organisms are richly connected and mobile organisms occupy higher food web positions.
Topic
Publisher
Place of Publication
Type
Journal article
Date
2021
Language
ISBN
Identifiers
10.3389/fmars.2021.636042