Latitudinal gradients in biotic niche breadth vary across ecosystem types.

ABSTRACT: Several properties of food webs-the networks of feeding links between species-are known to vary systematically with the species richness of the underlying community. Under the 'latitude-niche breadth hypothesis', which predicts that species in the tropics will tend to evolve narrower niches, one might expect that these scaling relationships could also be affected by latitude. To test this hypothesis, we analysed the scaling relationships between species richness and average generality, vulnerability and links per species across a set of 196 empirical food webs. In estuarine, marine and terrestrial food webs there was no effect of latitude on any scaling relationship, suggesting constant niche breadth in these habitats. In freshwater communities, on the other hand, there were strong effects

SUBMITTER: Cirtwill AR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4685804 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature