Colonization-competition dynamics of basal species shape food web complexity in island metacommunities.

ABSTRACT: Exploring how food web complexity emerges and evolves in island ecosystems remains a major challenge in ecology. Food webs assembled from multiple islands are commonly recognized as highly complex trophic networks that are dynamic in both space and time. In the context of global climate change, it remains unclear whether food web complexity will decrease in a monotonic fashion when undergoing habitat destruction (e.g., the inundation of islands due to sea-level rise). Here, we develop a simple yet comprehensive patch-dynamic framework for complex food web metacommunities subject to the competition-colonization tradeoff between basal species. We found that oscillations in food web topological complexity (characterized by species diversity, mean food chain length and the degree of omnivory)

SUBMITTER: Guo G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10232389 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature