2021
DOI: 10.1101/2021.04.12.439560
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Marine food webs are more complex but less stable in sub-Antarctic than in Antarctic regions

Abstract: Aim: Food web structure plays an important role in determining ecosystem stability to perturbations. High latitude marine ecosystems are being affected by environmental stressors and ecological shifts. In the West Antarctic Peninsula these transformations are driven by climate change, and in the sub-Antarctic region by anthropogenic activities. Understanding the differences between these areas is necessary to monitor the changes that are expected to occur in the upcoming decades. Here, we compared the structur… Show more

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Cited by 3 publications
(2 citation statements)
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References 115 publications
(147 reference statements)
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“…Only a few species play a key role with respect to the Weddell Sea food web stability, according to the stability index employed in this study. This is in concordance with other studies on complex empirical food webs in marine ecosystems in the Arctic and other locations in Antarctica (Kortsch et al, 2015;Marina et al, 2018;Rodriguez et al, 2022). These key species are characterised by a particular set of food web properties: high to mean IS; mid to high trophic level; a relatively high number of interactions; and mid to low trophic similarity.…”
Section: Species Impact On Food Web Stabilitysupporting
confidence: 90%
“…Only a few species play a key role with respect to the Weddell Sea food web stability, according to the stability index employed in this study. This is in concordance with other studies on complex empirical food webs in marine ecosystems in the Arctic and other locations in Antarctica (Kortsch et al, 2015;Marina et al, 2018;Rodriguez et al, 2022). These key species are characterised by a particular set of food web properties: high to mean IS; mid to high trophic level; a relatively high number of interactions; and mid to low trophic similarity.…”
Section: Species Impact On Food Web Stabilitysupporting
confidence: 90%
“…Increasingly frequent iceberg scouring between (0 and 50 m depth) may open space for further benthic growth, which may be important in driving annual carbon accumulation (Barnes and Sands, 2017).Thus, the vulnerability of biota in the shallows is likely to become a critical issue [see, e.g., Morley et al (2020)]. And, although Antarctic benthos can show high functional group surrogacy (Barnes and Sands, 2017) and food webs that are relatively stable against perturbations (Rodriguez et al, 2021), this study has highlighted that extremes disturbance gradient causes regions of vulnerability. In the future environmental change will likely lead to extirpation of species from certain depth boundary, as multiple environmental factors change, however, the functional structure will likely remain relatively stable particularly between 40 and 80 m depth.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 99%