Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity

“Temperate mussel beds provide habitat for hundreds of species and are strongly influenced by top-down interactions (Paine 1966); therefore, understanding the drivers of variation in predator selectivity, such as Nucella prey size selectivity, will help link larger ecological and climate processes to mussel bed structu…”

“, 475 2009) and their potential disappearance from ephemeral pools may lead to a cascade of 476 effects (Paine, 1966; Baum & Worm, 2009) with unknown consequences for 477 community structure.”

“The indirect effects in ecosystems have also long been a well-established empirical fact [34, 35, 36, 41, 47, 48].”

“Studying predator-prey interactions in deep time also helps evaluate its effect on the diversity, evolution and distribution of a group (Paine, 1966; Vermeij, 1977, 1987; Roy, 1996; Kelley and Hansen, 2003; Leighton and Aronowsky, 2003; Chattopadhyay and Baumiller, 2010; among others).”

“A ❖ www.esajournals.org 2 December 2017 ❖ Volume 8(12) ❖ Article e02005 classic example was the work by Paine (1966), which demonstrated that a single keystone species could influence an ecosystem far beyond its relative size or abundance, challenging the dominant view at the time that ecosystems…”

“Paine (1966) stated that predation prevents the dominance of one prey species by restricting their development and hindering resource monopolization.”

“…uptake, that is, differences in traits of the individual species (Debout, Dalecky, Ngomi, & McKey, 2009), and frequencydependent attack by natural enemies, that is, interactions with a third species (Abrams, 1999; Gliwicz & Wrzosek, 2008; Paine, 1966; Slobodkin, 1964; Vandermeer & Pascual, 2006).”

“Predation on multiple phytoplankton prey by zooplankton grazers in complex food chains, facilitate the maintenance of high diversity in phytoplankton assemblages (Paine, 1966; Menge and Sutherland, 1976).”

“This is a species that supports and promotes an ecosystem and keeps it running through active intervention (Paine 1966, 1969).”

“Consequences manifest when either a numerically abundant (e.g., whelks) or keystone (e.g., sea stars) predator consumes preferentially a foundation species prey (Paine, 1966, 1974; Connell, 1970; Navarrete and Manzur, 2008).”

“A keystone marine invertebrate species in the Pacific Northwest is the sea star Pisaster ochraceus (Paine 1966, Menge & Sanford 2013).”

“…C T I O N Describing the trophic dynamics of marine communities can provide better understanding of the organization and functioning of assemblages (Paine, 1966; Menge, 1992; Hamilton et al., 2014), enable prediction of responses to disturbance or disease (Witman, 1985; Harley et al., 2006;…”

“Predator–prey interactions are important drivers of community structure (Carpenter et al., 1985; Hairston et al., 1960; Paine, 1966; Sih et al., 1998).”

“Hypotheses related to competition (e.g., Darwin 1859; Gause 1934; Elton 1946; Diamond 1975), predation (e.g., Paine 1966), abiotic factors (e.g., Andrewartha and Birch 1954; Dunson and Travis 1991; Weiher and Keddy 1995), and processes associated with dispersal limitation (e.g., MacArthur and…”

“In general, even one predatory species may affect the structure of entire species assemblages via consumption of prey from lower trophic levels, thus predation is a top-down force and may have stabilizing effects on ecosystems (Paine 1966; Schmitz 1998).”

“The strategies by which animals develop diet preferences are ecologically important because diet selection can cause changes in community structure and function, including predator–prey interactions (Paine, 1966; Sih et al., 1985), competition between species (Pianka, 1981) and indirect community interactions (Wilbur…”