Abstract
Food web response to species loss has been investigated in several ways in the previous years. In binary food webs, species go secondarily extinct if no resource item remains to be exploited. In this work, we considered that species can go extinct before the complete loss of their resources and we introduced thresholds of minimum energy requirement for species survival. According to this approach, extinction of a node occurs whenever an initial extinction event eliminates its incoming links so it is left with an overall energy intake lower than the threshold value. We tested the robustness of 18 real food webs by removing species from most to least connected and considering different scenarios defined by increasing the extinction threshold. Increasing energy requirement threshold negatively affects food web robustness. We found that a very small increase of the energy requirement substantially increases system fragility. In addition, above a certain value of energy requirement threshold we found no relationship between the robustness and the connectance of the web. Further, food webs with more species showed higher fragility with increasing energy threshold. This suggests that the shape of the robustness–complexity relationship of a food web depends on the sensitivity of consumers to loss of prey.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Albert R, Jeong H, Barabasi A (2000) Error and attack tolerance of complex networks. Nature 406:378–382
Allesina S, Bodini A (2004) Who dominates whom in the ecosystem? Energy flow bottlenecks and cascading extinctions. J Theor Biol 230:351–358
Allesina S, Pascual M (2008) Network structure, predator–prey motifs, and stability in large food webs. Theor Ecol 1:55–64
Allesina S, Pascual M (2009) Googling food webs: can an eigenvector measure species' importance? PLoS Comp Biol 5(9):e1000494
Allesina S, Bodini A, Bondavalli C (2006) Secondary extinctions in ecological networks: bottlenecks unveiled. Ecol Model 194:150–161
Allesina S, Bodini A, Pascual M (2009) Functional links and robustness in food web. Phil Trans Roy Soc B 364:1701–1709
Banašek-Richter C, Bersier LF, Cattin MF, Merz Y, Baltensperger R, Gabriel JP, de Ruiter P, Tavares-Cromar A, Ulanowicz RE, Winemiller K, Naisbit RE (2009) Complexity in quantitative food webs. Ecology 90:1470–1477
Bascompte J, Melián CJ, Sala E (2005) Interaction strength combinations and the overfishing of a marine food web. PNAS 102:5443–5447
Bersier LF, Sugihara G (1997) Scaling regions for food web properties. PNAS 94:1247–1251
Bersier LF, Banasek-Richter C, Cattin MF (2002) Quantitative descriptors of food-web matrices. Ecology 83:2394–2407
Binzer A, Brose U, Curtsdotter A, Eklöf A, Rall BC, Riede JO, de Castro F (2011) The susceptibility of species to primary extinctions in model communities. Basic Appl Ecol 12:590–599
Bodini A, Bellingeri M, Bondavalli C, Allesina S (2009) Using food web dominator trees to catch secondary extinctions in action. Phil Trans R Soc B 364:1725–1731
Bondavalli C, Bodini A, Rossetti G, Allesina S (2006) Detecting stress at the whole ecosystem level. The case of a mountain lake: Lake Santo (Italy). Ecosystems 9:768–787
Borrvall C, Ebenman B, Jonsson T (2000) Biodiversity lessens the risk of cascading extinction in model food webs. Ecol Lett 3:131–136
Brose U (2011) Extinctions in complex, size-structured communities. Basic Appl Ecol 12:557–561
Curtsdotter A, Binzer A, Brose A, Eklöf A, Riede J, de Castro F et al (2011) Robustness to secondary extinctions: comparing trait-based sequential deletions in static and dynamic food-webs. Basic Appl Ecol 12:571–580
Dunne JA (2006) The network structure of food webs. Ecological Networks: Linking Structure to Dynamics in Food Webs. In Pascual M, Dunne JA (eds.), Oxford University Press, New York
Dunne J, Williams R (2009) Cascading extinctions and community collapse in model food webs. Phil Trans R Soc B 364:1711–1723
Dunne J, Williams R, Martinez N (2002) Network structure and biodiversity loss in food webs: robustness increases with connectance. Ecol Lett 5:558–567
Dunne J, Williams R, Martinez N (2004) Network structure and robustness of marine food webs. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 273:291–302
Ebenman B (2011) Response of ecosystems to realistic extinction sequences. J Anim Ecol 80:307–309
Eklöf A, Ebenman B (2006) Species loss and secondary extinctions in simple and complex model communities. J Anim Ecol 75:239–246
Estrada E (2007) Food webs robustness to biodiversity loss: the roles of connectance, expansibility and degree distribution. J Theor Biol 244:296–307
Fowler M (2009) Extinction cascade and the distribution of species interactions. Oikos 119:864–873
Gilbert AJ (2009) Connectance indicates the robustness of food webs when subjected to species loss. Ecol Indic 9:72–80
Jordan F, Scheuring I, Vida G (2002) Species positions and extinction dynamics in simple food webs. J Theor Biol 215:441–448
MacArthur RH (1955) Fluctuation of animal populations and a measure of community stability. Ecology 36:533–536
May RM (1972) Will a large complex system be stable? Nature 238:413–414
May RM (2006) Network structure and the biology of populations. Trends Ecol Evol 21:394–399
McCann K, Hastings A, Huxel GR (1998) Weak trophic interactions and the balance of nature. Nature 395:794–798
Montoya J, Sole R (2003) Topological properties of food webs: from real data to community assembly models. Oikos 102:614–622
Montoya J, Pimm S, Sole R (2006) Ecological networks and their fragility. Nature 442:259–264
Neutel AM, Heesterbeek JAP, De Ruiter PC (2002) Stability in real food webs: weak links in long loops. Science 296:1120–1123
O’Gormann EJ, Emmerson MC (2009) Perturbation to trophic interactions and the stability of complex food webs. PNAS 32:13393–13398
Pimm SL (1980) Food web design and the effect of species deletion. Oikos 35:139–149
Solé RV, Montoya JM (2001) Complexity and fragility in ecological networks. Proc R Soc Lond B 268:2039–2045
Srinivasan U, Dunne J, Harte J, Martinez N (2007) Response of complex food webs to realistic extinction sequences. Ecology 88:671–682
Staniczenko PPA, Lewis OT, Jones NS, Reed-Tsochas F (2010) Structural dynamics and robustness of food webs. Ecol Lett 13:891–899
Teng J, McCann KS (2004) Dynamics of compartmented and reticulate food web in relation to energetic flows. Am Nat 164:85–100
Thierry A, Beckerman AP, Warren PH, Williams RJ, Cole AJ, Petchey OL (2011) Adaptive foraging and the rewiring of size structured food webs following extinctions. Basic Appl Ecol 12:562–570
Tylianakis JM, Laliberté E, Nielsen A, Bascompte J (2010) Conservation of species interaction networks. Biol Conserv 143:2270–2279
Ulanowicz RE (1986) Growth and development: ecosystems. Phenomenology. Springer, NY, p 203
Valdovinos FS, Ramos-Jiliberto R, Garay-Narvaez L, Urbani P, Dunne JA (2010) Consequences of adaptive behaviour for the structure and dynamics of food webs Ecol Lett 13:1546–1559
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Francesco Scotognella and Emanuela Tenca for the helpful discussions and comments on earlier versions of this paper. We thank Simone Vincenzi and two anonymous reviewers for revisions that greatly improved the paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
ESM 1
(DOC 475 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bellingeri, M., Bodini, A. Threshold extinction in food webs. Theor Ecol 6, 143–152 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12080-012-0166-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12080-012-0166-0