Congruent trophic pathways underpin global coral reef food webs.

ABSTRACT: Ecological interactions uphold ecosystem structure and functioning. However, as species richness increases, the number of possible interactions rises exponentially. More than 6,000 species of coral reef fishes exist across the world's tropical oceans, resulting in an almost innumerable array of possible trophic interactions. Distilling general patterns in these interactions across different bioregions stands to improve our understanding of the processes that govern coral reef functioning. Here, we show that across bioregions, tropical coral reef food webs exhibit a remarkable congruence in their trophic interactions. Specifically, by compiling and investigating the structure of six coral reef food webs across distinct bioregions, we show that when accounting for consumer size and resource

SUBMITTER: Pozas-Schacre C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8488628 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature