The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Stability in Real Food Webs: Weak Links in Long Loops
Open accessAbstract
Increasing evidence that the strengths of interactions among populations in biological communities form patterns that are crucial for system stability requires clarification of the precise form of these patterns, how they come about, and why they influence stability. We show that in real food webs, interaction strengths are organized in trophic loops in such a way that long loops contain relatively many weak links. We show and explain mathematically that this patterning enhances stability, because it reduces maximum “loop weight” and thus reduces the amount of intraspecific interaction needed for matrix stability. The patterns are brought about by biomass pyramids, a feature common to most ecosystems. Incorporation of biomass pyramids in 104 food-web descriptions reveals that the low weight of the long loops stabilizes complex food webs. Loop-weight analysis could be a useful tool for exploring the structure and organization of complex communities.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Towards sustainability in world fisheries.
Pauly, D., Christensen, V., Guénette, S., Pitcher, T. J., Sumaila, U. R., Walters, C. J., Watson, R., & Zeller, D. (2002) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature01017 · Cited by 3,019
Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere
Barnosky, A. D., Hadly, E. A., Bascompte, J., Berlow, E. L., Brown, J. H., Fortelius, M., Getz, W. M., Harte, J., Hastings, A., Marquet, P. A., et al. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11018 · Cited by 1,966
Intensive agriculture reduces soil biodiversity across Europe
Tsiafouli, M. A., Thébault, E., Sgardelis, S. P., de Ruiter, P. C., van der Putten, W. H., Birkhofer, K., Hemerik, L., de Vries, F. T., Bardgett, R. D., Brady, M. V., et al. (2015) · Global Change Biology · doi:10.1111/gcb.12752 · Cited by 1,108
Self-citationIs a healthy ecosystem one that is rich in parasites?
Hudson, P. J., Dobson, A. P., & Lafferty, K. D. (2006) · Trends in Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2006.04.007 · Cited by 989
Review: Ecological networks – beyond food webs
Ings, T. C., Montoya, J. M., Bascompte, J., Blüthgen, N., Brown, L., Dormann, C. F., Edwards, F., Figueroa, D., Jacob, U., Jones, J. I., et al. (2009) · Journal of Animal Ecology · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2656.2008.01460.x · Cited by 934
Metadata
- Authors
- Neutel, A.-M., Heesterbeek, J. A. P., & de Ruiter, P. C.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2002-05-10
- Volume
- 296
- Issue
- 5570
- Pages
- 1120-1123
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W1972753341
- Cited by
- 833
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 28.66
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Stability in Real Food Webs: Weak Links in Long Loops. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1068326
- The paper
- Neutel, A.-M., Heesterbeek, J. A. P., & de Ruiter, P. C. (2002). Stability in Real Food Webs: Weak Links in Long Loops. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1068326
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
