The DOI matches its Crossref record; 84 of the 84 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
A landscape theory for food web architecture.
Abstract
Ecologists have long searched for structures and processes that impart stability in nature. In particular, food web ecology has held promise in tackling this issue. Empirical patterns in food webs have consistently shown that the distributions of species and interactions in nature are more likely to be stable than randomly constructed systems with the same number of species and interactions. Food web ecology still faces two fundamental challenges, however. First, the quantity and quality of food web data required to document both the species richness and the interaction strengths among all species within food webs is largely prohibitive. Second, where food webs have been well documented, spatial and temporal variation in food web structure has been ignored. Conversely, research that has addressed spatial and temporal variation in ecosystems has generally ignored the full complexity of food web architecture. Here, we incorporate empirical patterns, largely from macroecology and behavioural ecology, into a spatially implicit food web structure to construct a simple landscape theory of food web architecture. Such an approach both captures important architectural features of food webs and allows for an exploration of food web structure across a range of spatial scales. Finally, we demonstrated that food webs are hierarchically organized along the spatial and temporal niche axes of species and their utilization of food resources in ways that stabilize ecosystems.
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“This suggests a similar pattern of fast and slow energy channels to those described by Rooney and colleagues, with fast energy flow up through the highly seasonal but very productive grasses of the short-grass plains.”
From Spatial Guilds in the Serengeti Food Web Revealed by a Bayesian Group Model (2011) · cites this paper as [48]
In the citing paper
“These patterns emerge directly from the topology of the food web without being explicitly labeled as different habitats upfront as was done in previous empirical work [48], showing that topological analysis can reveal structures that may be very significant for food-web dynamics.”
From Spatial Guilds in the Serengeti Food Web Revealed by a Bayesian Group Model (2011) · cites this paper as [48]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Rooney, N., McCann, K. S., & Moore, J. C.
- Affiliations
- University of Guelph (CA)
- Colorado State University (US)
- Venue
- Ecology Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2008-07-08
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 867-881
- ISSN
- 1461-023X (ISSN-L)
- 1461-0248
- OpenAlex
- W2053068879
- Cited by
- 245
- References
- 84
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 16 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 19 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 17 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 14 · 2013: 16 · 2012: 11
- FWCI
- 0.98
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Ecology Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Nature and Landscape Conservation › Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Applied Mathematics › Mathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies
- Keywords
- landscape theory, food web stability, hierarchy, spatial scale, food resource utilization, interaction strength, species richness
- MeSH terms
- Energy Metabolism, Models, Biological, Population Dynamics, Food Chain, Body Size
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