Length and evolutionary stability of food chains

Hastings, Harold M.; Conrad, Michael

doi:10.1038/282838a0

Cited by 50 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…This leads to a hypothesis that food-web structure and its response to environmental variables may arise from adaptive diet choices. Attempts to explain food-web structure as a consequence of foraging adaptation have been reported (Hastings & Conrad 1979;Matsuda & Namba 1991;Křivan 2000;Post et al 2000b;Loeuille & Loreau 2005;Beckerman et al 2006;Petchey et al 2008). However, those studies do not explicitly discuss why food-chain length shows correlation or no relationship with specific environmental factors such as resource availability.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, those studies do not explicitly discuss why food-chain length shows correlation or no relationship with specific environmental factors such as resource availability. Some studies that have explicit or implicit prediction on resource availability effects only analyse the dynamics of a simple module that consists of a few species (Hastings & Conrad 1979;Holt & Polis 1997;Křivan 2000) and have left unclear their applicability to more complex food webs (e.g. Pimm 1982, arguing on limitation of the adaptation-based theory of Hastings & Conrad 1979, which assumes a simple linear food chain).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pimm (1982) summarized four hypotheses of food-chain length: (i) food-chain length is limited by available energy and should increase with increasing resource availability (the energy limitation hypothesis; Elton 1927;Lindemann 1942;Hutchinson 1959); (ii) a longer food chain is less persistent under disturbed environments (the dynamic stability hypothesis; Pimm & Lawton 1977; but see Sterner et al 1997); (iii) optimal diet choices of individual species determine the food-chain length (the optimal foraging hypothesis; Hastings & Conrad 1979);and (iv) food-chain length is limited by the constraint that a predator should be larger than its prey (the design constraint hypothesis). In addition, empirical evidence from both aquatic (Spencer & Warren 1996;Vander Zanden et al 1999;Post et al 2000a;Doi et al 2009) and terrestrial ecosystems (Schoener 1989;Takimoto et al 2008) suggests that food-chain length is positively correlated with habitat area (Cohen & Newman 1988), raising another possible determinant of food-chain length.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Food-chain length and adaptive foraging

Kondo

Ninomiya

2009

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Food-chain length, the number of feeding links from the basal species to the top predator, is a key characteristic of biological communities. However, the determinants of food-chain length still remain controversial. While classical theory predicts that food-chain length should increase with increasing resource availability, empirical supports of this prediction are limited to those from simple, artificial microcosms. A positive resource availability -chain length relationship has seldom been observed in natural ecosystems. Here, using a theoretical model, we show that those correlations, or no relationships, may be explained by considering the dynamic food-web reconstruction induced by predator's adaptive foraging. More specifically, with foraging adaptation, the food-chain length becomes relatively invariant, or even decreases with increasing resource availability, in contrast to a non-adaptive counterpart where chain length increases with increasing resource availability; and that maximum chain length more sharply decreases with resource availability either when species richness is higher or potential link number is larger. The interactive effects of resource availability, adaptability and community complexity may explain the contradictory effects of resource availability in simple microcosms and larger ecosystems. The model also explains the recently reported positive effect of habitat size on food-chain length as a result of increased species richness and/or decreased connectance owing to interspecific spatial segregation.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Food-chain length and adaptive foraging

Kondo

Ninomiya

2009

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…[9]). Ecological theory has long tried to understand why food chains should have limited length [3,5,10,11]. For instance, the energetic constraint hypothesis [3] invokes imperfect transfers of energy and resources along food chains, whereas the dynamics constraint hypothesis [11,12] considers that long food chains are more vulnerable to perturbation than short ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraints on food chain length arising from regional metacommunity dynamics

et al. 2011

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Classical ecological theory has proposed several determinants of food chain length, but the role of metacommunity dynamics has not yet been fully considered. By modelling patchy predator -prey metacommunities with extinction -colonization dynamics, we identify two distinct constraints on food chain length. First, finite colonization rates limit predator occupancy to a subset of prey-occupied sites. Second, intrinsic extinction rates accumulate along trophic chains. We show how both processes concur to decrease maximal and average food chain length in metacommunities. This decrease is mitigated if predators track their prey during colonization (habitat selection) and can be reinforced by topdown control of prey vital rates (especially extinction). Moreover, top-down control of colonization and habitat selection can interact to produce a counterintuitive positive relationship between perturbation rate and food chain length. Our results show how novel limits to food chain length emerge in spatially structured communities. We discuss the connections between these constraints and the ones commonly discussed, and suggest ways to test for metacommunity effects in food webs.

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“…Accordingly, energy delivery in ecosystems would not be organized according to the criterion of optimal efficiency. In fact whether delivering at a minimum cost would represent the optimal solution, a suite of interacting constraints such as food preference (Chesson, 1983), size effect in predator-prey interactions (Hastings and Conrad, 1979;Cousins, 1987), dynamical features (Pimm and Lawton, 1977;Sterner et al, 1997), and efficiency in energy transfer between trophic levels (Hairston and Hairston, 1993) determine which flow patterns really govern resource distribution in ecosystems. These evidences challenge the idea of ecosystems as more efficient than river and vascular networks in delivering medium (Garlaschelli et al, 2003;Banavar et al, 1999).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%