Axel G Rossberg

Food Webs and Biodiversity

Foundations, Models, Data

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book provides a timely synthesis of community ecology that evaluates the strengths and limitations of current food web theories and provides a fresh, new comprehensive numerical model for evaluating community structure and evolution. The book develops the argument that food webs will often be the key to understanding the mechanisms that control patterns of biodiversity at the community level, in particular species richness, that is, the total number of species co-existing in a community.

---

Food webs have now been addressed in empirical and theoretical research for more than 50 years. Yet, even elementary foundational issues are still hotly debated. One difficulty is that a multitude of processes need to be taken into account to understand the patterns found empirically in the structure of food webs and communities. Food Webs and Biodiversity develops a fresh, comprehensive perspective on food webs. Mechanistic explanations for several known macroecological patterns are derived from a few fundamental concepts, which are quantitatively linked to field-observables. An argument is developed that food webs will often be the key to understanding patterns of biodiversity at community level. Key Features: * Predicts generic characteristics of ecological communities in invasion-extirpation equilibrium. * Generalizes the theory of competition to food webs with arbitrary topologies. * Presents a new, testable quantitative theory for the mechanisms determining species richness in food webs, and other new results. * Written by an internationally respected expert in the field. With global warming and other pressures on ecosystems rising, understanding and protecting biodiversity is a cause of international concern. This highly topical book will be of interest to a wide ranging audience, including not only graduate students and practitioners in community and conservation ecology but also the complex-systems research community as well as mathematicians and physicists interested in the theory of networks. "This is a comprehensive work outlining a large array of very novel and potentially game-changing ideas in food web ecology." Ken Haste Andersen, Technical University of Denmark "I believe that this will be a landmark book in community ecology ... it presents a well-established and consistent mathematical theory of food-webs. It is testable in many ways and the author finds remarkable agreements between predictions and reality." Géza Meszéna, Eötvös University, Budapest

Produktdetails

• Verlag: John Wiley & Sons / Turner Publishing Company
• Seitenzahl: 396
• Erscheinungstermin: 5. August 2013
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 244mm x 170mm x 25mm
• Gewicht: 748g
• ISBN-13: 9780470973554
• ISBN-10: 0470973552
• Artikelnr.: 37725120

Autorenporträt

Axel G. Rossberg obtained an M.A. in theoretical physics at the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in complex-system physics at the University of Bayreuth. Since 2003 he is specializing on food-web theory and community ecology. To foster applications in the management context he recently joined UK's Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (Cefas). He is also Senior Research Fellow at Queen's University Belfast and Honorary Lecturer at University of East Anglia, and serves on the editorial board of The American Naturalist.

Inhaltsangabe

Acknowledgments xvii List of Symbols xix Part I Preliminaries 1
Introduction 3 2 Models and Theories 7 2.1 The usefulness of models 7 2.2
What models should model 8 2.3 The possibility of ecological theory 10 2.4
Theory-driven ecological research 11 3 Some Basic Concepts 13 3.1 Basic
concepts of food-web studies 13 3.2 Physical quantities and dimensions 15
Part II Elements of Food-Web Models 4 Energy and Biomass Budgets 19 4.1
Currencies of accounting 19 4.2 Rates and efficiencies 20 4.3 Energy
budgets in food webs 21 5 Allometric Scaling Relationships Between Body
Size and Physiological Rates 25 5.1 Scales and scaling 25 5.2 Allometric
scaling 26 6 Population Dynamics 29 6.1 Basic considerations 29 6.2
Structured populations and density-dependence 32 6.3 The Quasi-Neutral
Approximation 35 6.4 Reproductive value 40 7 From Trophic Interactions to
Trophic Link Strengths 45 7.1 Functional and numerical responses 45 7.2
Three models for functional responses 46 7.3 Food webs as networks of
trophic link strengths 48 8 Tropic Niche Space and Trophic Traits 51 8.1
Topology and dimensionality of trophic niche space 52 8.2 Examples and
ecological interpretations 55 8.3 Determination of trophic niche-space
dimensionality 58 8.4 Identification of trophic traits 60 8.5 The geometry
of trophic niche space 65 8.6 Conclusions 75 9 Community Turnover and
Evolution 77 9.1 The spatial scale of interest 77 9.2 How communities
evolve 78 9.3 The mutation-for-dispersion trick 79 9.4
Mutation-for-dispersion in a neutral food-web model 80 10 The
Population-Dynamical Matching Model 81 Part III Mechanisms and Processes 11
Basic Characterizations of Link-Strength Distributions 87 11.1 Modelling
the distribution of logarithmic link strengths 88 11.2 High-dimensional
trophic niche spaces 93 12 Diet Partitioning 103 12.1 The diet partitioning
function 103 12.2 Modelling the DPF 107 12.3 Comparison with data 113 12.4
Conclusions 114 13 Multivariate Link-Strength Distributions and
Phylogenetic Patterns 117 13.1 Modelling phylogenetic structure in trophic
traits 118 13.2 The matching model 123 13.3 Characteristics of
phylogenetically structured food webs 126 14 A Framework Theory for
Community Assembly 137 14.1 Ecological communities as dynamical systems 137
14.2 Existence, positivity, stability, and permanence 138 14.3 Generic
bifurcations in community dynamics and their ecological phenomenology 139
14.4 Comparison with observations 144 14.5 Invasion fitness and harvesting
resistance 148 14.6 Community assembly and stochastic species packing 152
15 Competition in Food Webs 165 15.1 Basic concepts 166 15.2 Competition in
two-level food webs 167 15.3 Competition in arbitrary food webs 173 16
Mean-Field Theory of Resource-Mediated Competition 181 16.1 Transition to
scaled variables 182 16.2 The extended mean-field theory of competitive
exclusion 184 17 Resource-Mediated Competition and Assembly 193 17.1
Preparation 193 17.2 Stochastic species packing under asymmetric
competition 197 17.3 Stochastic species packing with competition symmetry
207 18 Random-Matrix Competition Theory 221 18.1 Asymmetric competition 221
18.2 Stability vs feasibility limits to species richness 225 18.3 Partially
and fully symmetric competition 226 18.4 Sparse overlap matrices 228 18.5
Resource overlap matrices 230 18.6 Comparison with data 242 19 Species
Richness, Size and Trophic Level 247 19.1 Predator-prey mass ratios 247
19.2 Modelling the joint distribution of size, trophic level, and species
richness 249 20 Consumer-Mediated Competition and Assembly 255 20.1 A
two-level food-web assembly model 256 20.2 Analytic characterization of the
model steady state 257 20.3 Dependence of invader impacts on dietary
diversity 262 20.4 Evolution of base attack rates 266 21 Food Chains and
Size Spectra 271 21.1 Concepts 271 21.2 Power-law food chains 274
perturbations 278 21.3 Food chains with non-linear functional responses 281
21.4 What are the mechanisms controlling the scaling laws? 290 21.5
Scavengers and detrivores 294 22 Structure and Dynamics of PDMM Model
Communities 297 22.1 PDMM model definition 298 22.2 PDMM simulations 303
22.3 The PDMM with evolving attack rates 314 22.4 Conclusions 318 Part IV
Implications 23 Scientific Implications 323 23.1 Main mechanisms identified
by the theory 323 23.2 Testable assumptions and predictions 325 23.3 Some
unsolved problems 327 23.4 The future of community ecology 329 24
Conservation Implications 331 24.1 Assessing biodiversity 331 24.2
Modelling ecological communities 333 24.3 Managing biodiversity 334
Appendix A 337 A.1 Mathematical concepts, formulae, and jargon 337
Bibliography 349 Index 365