Integrating economic dynamics into ecological networks: The case of fishery sustainability

Abstract

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.

Alteration of coastal productivity and artisanal fisheries interact to affect a marine food web

“…Previous work shows that the ATN model is capable of describing community dynamics remarkably well 88 , 90 – 93 and that it is robust to parametrization 53 . Part of the analytical power of the ATN approach is that ecological interactions are reasonably parameterized with species body masses, allowing researchers to focus their on other model aspects 50 .…”

“…Most of these studies used a static approach, which stems from network theory and analyzes the impacts of structural changes on food webs represented by nodes (species) and links (interactions) that connect nodes, but ignores interaction strengths and population dynamics of interacting species 38 . Other studies used a dynamic approach, which considers not only the structure and intensity of interactions in a food web, but also the changes in species biomasses through time and the indirect effects that these changes have on other species 39 – 41 , 48 – 50 . Here, we use both approaches to understand the relative importance of harvested species in our food web.…”

A bioenergetic framework for aboveground terrestrial food webs

“…Bioenergetic food web approaches [1,2] have fueled an industry of ecological research [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. However the inherent focus on body size has resulted in an approach less suitable for exploring empirical patterns in terrestrial systems [11,12], especially plant-consumer (herbivore, mutualist) interactions, which are often determined by factors other than body size [3,10,12].…”

“…With the increased use of bioenergetic approaches to understand complex outcomes of global change [4,6,7,9,13], there is increasing need for a holistic bioenergetic framework that addresses the challenges introduced in terrestrial ecosystems. Here we review previous efforts to capture the mechanistic processes governing aboveground plant-consumer interactions, and develop a conceptual and mathematical guide for integrating these processes into a holistic framework that is established on bioenergetic constraints.…”

Small-Scale Fishing and Sustainability. An Ethnographic Approach to the Case of Self-Employed Fishermen in the South-East of Spain

“…In this sense, we can specify the advantages of this type of fishing in relation to its social, environmental, and economic benefits. That is, we can speak of (1) social sustainability, since it guarantees the employment of families on the coast where it is practiced, including three main aspects: recognition, redistribution, and parity of participation [44]; (2) environmental sustainability, due to the use of its techniques and the short distance each fishing day [45][46][47]; and (3) economic sustainability, since it allows income to be optimized from an adjustment in costs [48,49].…”