Understanding anthropogenic impacts on ecosystems requires investigating feedback processes between ecological and economic dynamics. While network ecology has advanced our understanding of large-scale communities, it has not robustly coupled economic drivers of anthropogenic impact to ecological outcomes. Leveraging allometric trophic network models, we study such integrated economic-ecological dynamics in the case of fishery sustainability. We incorporate economic drivers of fishing effort into food-web network models, evaluating the dynamics of thousands of single-species fisheries across hundreds of simulated food webs under fixed-effort and open-access management strategies. Analyzing simulation results reveals that harvesting species with high population biomass can initially support fishery persistence but threatens long-term economic and ecological sustainability by indirectly inducing extinction cascades in non-harvested species. This dynamic is exacerbated in open-access fisheries where profit-driven growth in fishing effort increases perturbation strength. Our results demonstrate how network theory provides necessary ecological context when considering the sustainability of economically dynamic fishing effort.
26Understanding and sustainably managing anthropogenic impact on ecosystems requires studying the 27 integrated economic -ecological dynamics driving coupled human-natural systems. Here, we expand 28 ecological network theory to study fishery sustainability by incorporating economic drivers into food-web 29 models to evaluate the dynamics of thousands of single-species fisheries across hundreds of generated 30 food-webs and two management strategies. Analysis reveals harvesting high population biomass species 31 can initially support fishery persistence, but threatens long term economic and ecological sustainability by 32 indirectly inducing extinction cascades in non-harvested species. This dynamic is exacerbated in open 33 access fisheries where profit driven growth in fishing effort increases perturbation strength. Results 34 demonstrate the unique insight into both ecological dynamics and sustainability garnered from 35 considering economically dynamic fishing effort in the network. 36 37 38 39 One Sentence Summary: Integrating economic drivers into ecological networks reveal non-linear drivers 40 of sustainability in fisheries. 41 42 Main 43The advent of network theory in ecology and environmental studies has greatly advanced the 44 study of ecological dynamics and complexity (1, 2). These advances have also translated into a growing 45 knowledge of how human caused disturbances can create far-reaching ecological impacts through indirect 46 effects (3-6). Often, however, the disturbances in these network studies have been studied as a one-time 47
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