Robustness to secondary extinctions: Comparing trait-based sequential deletions in static and dynamic food webs

Curtsdotter, Alva; Binzer, Amrei; Brose, Ulrich; Castro, Francisco de; Ebenman, Bo; Eklöf, Anna; Riede, Jens; Thierry, Aaron; Rall, Björn C.

doi:10.1016/j.baae.2011.09.008

Cited by 90 publications

(147 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The loss of large-bodied populations in food websas may result from warming [73,74]-may cause secondary-extinction avalanches [72,77,78]. Climate change may thus induce trophic cascades where the loss of species (in particular large ones) has alternating positive and negative effects on the trophic levels below (figure 2).…”

Section: Warming and Top-down Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change in size-structured ecosystems

Brose

Dunne

Montoya

et al. 2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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176

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One important aspect of climate change is the increase in average temperature, which will not only have direct physiological effects on all species but also indirectly modifies abundances, interaction strengths, food-web topologies, community stability and functioning. In this theme issue, we highlight a novel pathway through which warming indirectly affects ecological communities: by changing their size structure (i.e. the body-size distributions). Warming can shift these distributions towards dominance of small-over large-bodied species. The conceptual, theoretical and empirical research described in this issue, in sum, suggests that effects of temperature may be dominated by changes in size structure, with relatively weak direct effects. For example, temperature effects via size structure have implications for top-down and bottom-up control in ecosystems and may ultimately yield novel communities. Moreover, scaling up effects of temperature and body size from physiology to the levels of populations, communities and ecosystems may provide a crucially important mechanistic approach for forecasting future consequences of global warming.

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Section: Warming and Top-down Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate change in size-structured ecosystems

Brose

Dunne

Montoya

et al. 2012

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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176

170

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“…This model has been extensively used to derive theory based on numerical simulations (e.g. Binzer et al 2011;Curtsdotter et al 2011;Berlow et al 2009;Brose et al 2006). Recently, this framework has also been extended to mechanistically model the effect of temperature on community dynamics (Gilbert et al 2014;Vasseur et al 2005;O'Connor et al 2011), using metabolic theory of ecology (Brown et al 2004).…”

Section: Species Interactions and Community Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Curtsdotter et al 2011;Ebenman et al 2004;Berlow et al 2009). In a food web context, the topological approach only captures bottom up effects (species losing all their prey will go extinct), whereas the dynamical approach can reveal both bottom-up and top-down effects (Eklöf and Ebenman 2006;Curtsdotter et al 2011). When it comes to less severe perturbations some research has focused on community sensitivity analysis (Berg et al 2011).…”

Section: Time Series Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dunne et al 2002), or by using dynamical models (e.g. Curtsdotter et al 2011;Ebenman et al 2004;Berlow et al 2009). In a food web context, the topological approach only captures bottom up effects (species losing all their prey will go extinct), whereas the dynamical approach can reveal both bottom-up and top-down effects (Eklöf and Ebenman 2006;Curtsdotter et al 2011).…”

Section: Time Series Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Functional Extinctions of Species in Ecological Networks

Säterberg¹

2016

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Current rates of extinctions are estimated to be around 1000 times higher than background rates that would occur without anthropogenic impacts. These extinction rates refer to the traditional view of extinctions, i.e. numerical extinctions. This thesis is about another type of extinctions: functional extinctions. Those occur when the abundance of a species is too small to uphold the species’ ecologically interactive role. I have taken a theoretical approach and used dynamical models to investigate functional extinctions and threshold values for species’ mortality rates in ecological networks. More specifically, I have derived threshold values for focal species mortality rates at which another species or the focal species itself goes numerically extinct (Paper I-II), or transgresses some predefined threshold abundance (Paper III). If an increased mortality rate of a focal species causes another species to go numerically extinct, the focal species can be regarded as functionally extinct, since its abundance is no longer large enough to uphold its ecologically interactive role. Such functional extinctions are investigated in the first papers (Paper I-II). In the following paper, limits for both increased and decreased mortality rates of species are explored (Paper III). Paper III also extends the basic theoretical idea developed in paper I-II into a more applied setting. In this paper I develop a time series approach aimed at estimating fishing mortalities associated with a low risk that any species in a community transgresses some predefined critical abundance threshold. In the last paper (Paper IV) the community wide effect of changes in the abundance of species is investigated. In the first paper (Paper I) I investigate threshold levels for the mortality rate of species in ecological networks. When an increased mortality rate of a focal species causes another species to go extinct, the focal species can be characterized as functional extinct, even though it still exists. Such functional extinctions have been observed in a few systems, but their frequency and general patterns have been unexplored. Using a new analytical method the patterns and frequency of functional extinctions in theoretical and empirical ecological networks are explored. It is found that the species most likely to be the first to go extinct is not the species whose mortality rate is increased, but instead another species in the network. The species which goes extinct is often not even directly linked to the species whose mortality rate is increased, but instead indirectly linked. Further, it is found that large-bodied species at the top of food chains can only be exposed to small increases in mortality rate and small decreases in abundance before going functionally extinct compared to small-bodied species lower in the food chains. These results illustrate the potential importance of functional extinctions in ecological networks and lend support to arguments advocating a more community-oriented approach in conservation biology, with target level...

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“…Population growth rate is one factor that can cause differences in species' environmental response within food webs [12]. Additionally, multiple studies on food web models have revealed the potential for both large [13,14] as well as small [15] changes in species' densities or structural changes [16,17] to give cascading effects on other positions in the food web. The combined effect from environmental variation and species -species interactions is likely complex but nevertheless utterly important to disentangle.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental variability uncovers disruptive effects of species' interactions on population dynamics

2015

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How species respond to changes in environmental variability has been shown for single species, but the question remains whether these results are transferable to species when incorporated in ecological communities. Here, we address this issue by analysing the same species exposed to a range of environmental variabilities when (i) isolated or (ii) embedded in a food web. We find that all species in food webs exposed to temporally uncorrelated environments (white noise) show the same type of dynamics as isolated species, whereas species in food webs exposed to positively autocorrelated environments (red noise) can respond completely differently compared with isolated species. This is owing to species following their equilibrium densities in a positively autocorrelated environment that in turn enables species-species interactions to come into play. Our results give new insights into species' response to environmental variation. They especially highlight the importance of considering both species' interactions and environmental autocorrelation when studying population dynamics in a fluctuating environment.

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Robustness to secondary extinctions: Comparing trait-based sequential deletions in static and dynamic food webs

Cited by 90 publications

References 45 publications

Climate change in size-structured ecosystems

Climate change in size-structured ecosystems

Functional Extinctions of Species in Ecological Networks

Environmental variability uncovers disruptive effects of species' interactions on population dynamics

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