Species’ roles in food webs show fidelity across a highly variable oak forest

Baker, Nick; Kaartinen, Riikka; Roslin, Tomas; Stouffer, Daniel B.

doi:10.1111/ecog.00913

Cited by 57 publications

(97 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…Interestingly, Baker et al . () conclude that species generally have conserved motif roles (compared to random arrangements) which is somewhat similar to the high partner fidelity (compared to random partner utilization) found in pollination networks (Trøjelsgaard et al . ).…”

Section: Perspectivessupporting

confidence: 64%

“…; Baker et al . ). For host–parasitoid networks, it has been shown that species tend to have a particular motif role across space and time (more so than if interactions were arranged randomly), that networks, as a whole, contain non‐random subsets of all possible motif roles and that the collection of motif roles found in a particular network may change from year to year (Baker et al .…”

Section: Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 97%

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Ecological networks in motion: micro‐ and macroscopic variability across scales

2016

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Summary1. There has been an intense focus on the response of species to environmental changes, and more recently, the interactions of species have been examined in a similar way in order to understand the stability of entire communities and networks of interacting species. As a consequence, ecological networks have been placed in spatial and temporal contexts in order to reveal what may drive network variability. Understanding the spatial and temporal variability of ecological networks, and in particular the underlying forces facilitating changes, seems pertinent in our attempts to understand and anticipate how ecological networks may vary and respond to future environmental scenarios. 2. Network variability has been studied at widely differing temporal and spatial scales. For example, studies exploring temporal variability ranges from within-season comparisons to comparisons over vast geological time spans, and the spatial extent ranges from the scale of a single pond to global analyses. Here, we highlight the outcomes from such studies and emphasize the identified mechanisms driving spatio-temporal variability in ecological networks. Specifically, we describe how ecological networks vary over different temporal (years, centuries and millennia) and spatial (local, regional and global) scales, discuss how this variability is monitored and identify potential future directions. 3. Present knowledge allows some tentative generalizations. First, ecological networks tend to exhibit considerable spatial and temporal stability in several macroscopic features (e.g. connectance, nestedness), but studies also show that macroscopic features may change, for example, in relation to mass extinction or steep environmental gradients. Secondly, microscopic features (e.g. individual specialization levels, species roles and partner affiliations), albeit less studied, seem to show strong variability, and in several cases, microscopic instability co-occurs with macroscopic stability. We therefore recommend a stronger focus on this macro-micro interplay and list ideas (e.g. temporal species centrality measures and interaction phenologies), towards expanding the microscopic toolbox of network ecologists.

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Section: Perspectivessupporting

confidence: 64%

Section: Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 97%

Ecological networks in motion: micro‐ and macroscopic variability across scales

2016

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“…Based on this vector it is possible to identify species statistically that exhibit similar profiles. Motif positions tend to be well conserved both in time (Stouffer et al, ) and space (Baker et al, ), making them ideal candidates to be investigated alongside functional traits and phylogenetic history.…”

Section: What Can We Learn With Ecological Network?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysing ecological networks of species interactions

et al. 2018

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Network approaches to ecological questions have been increasingly used, particularly in recent decades. The abstraction of ecological systems - such as communities - through networks of interactions between their components indeed provides a way to summarize this information with single objects. The methodological framework derived from graph theory also provides numerous approaches and measures to analyze these objects and can offer new perspectives on established ecological theories as well as tools to address new challenges. However, prior to using these methods to test ecological hypotheses, it is necessary that we understand, adapt, and use them in ways that both allow us to deliver their full potential and account for their limitations. Here, we attempt to increase the accessibility of network approaches by providing a review of the tools that have been developed so far, with - what we believe to be - their appropriate uses and potential limitations. This is not an exhaustive review of all methods and metrics, but rather, an overview of tools that are robust, informative, and ecologically sound. After providing a brief presentation of species interaction networks and how to build them in order to summarize ecological information of different types, we then classify methods and metrics by the types of ecological questions that they can be used to answer from global to local scales, including methods for hypothesis testing and future perspectives. Specifically, we show how the organization of species interactions in a community yields different network structures (e.g., more or less dense, modular or nested), how different measures can be used to describe and quantify these emerging structures, and how to compare communities based on these differences in structures. Within networks, we illustrate metrics that can be used to describe and compare the functional and dynamic roles of species based on their position in the network and the organization of their interactions as well as associated new methods to test the significance of these results. Lastly, we describe potential fruitful avenues for new methodological developments to address novel ecological questions.

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“…We followed the methods outlined in Baker et al. () and determined species’ role conservation across lakes by performing a perMANOVA. Here, total dissimilarity D across all species and networks was calculated with

D = \frac{1}{N} \sum_{i = 1}^{N - 1} \sum_{j = i + 1}^{N} e_{italicij}^{2}

where N is the total number of species’ roles (across all species and lakes) and e ij is the distance between role i and role j .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…) and how individual species roles are altered by interaction turnover Baker et al. (). Together, they have the potential to improve the predictive capacity of our network models.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of species traits, motif profiles, and environment on spatial variation in multi‐trophic antagonistic networks

2020

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Understanding drivers of antagonistic interactions across temporal and spatial scales is important for predicting community structure. In particular, studies examining spatial variation in ecological networks are critical for anticipating community responses to anthropogenic change. Most studies examining spatial interaction turnover focus on bipartite networks begging the question of whether the results are also reflected in unipartite, multi‐trophic networks. To examine the spatial turnover in food web interactions, the environmental and ecological drivers of this, and the influence of interaction turnover on the preservation of individual species’ roles, we used a spatially expansive multi‐trophic antagonistic ecological network data set of 129 lakes spanning over 1000 kms. We used β‐diversity metrics to quantify spatial turnover in interactions and calculated the relative contributions of interaction rewiring and turnover in top, intermediate, and basal species to network turnover. We then investigated the relative and combined role of multiple ecological drivers (e.g., abundance, thermal tolerance) and environmental drivers (e.g., latitude, total phosphorus) on internal network structure. Finally, we used a motif analysis to measure the effect of spatial interaction turnover on the variation in individual species’ roles. We observed high interaction turnover across lakes, driven primarily by turnover in basal species but also the rewiring of interactions among shared species, driven, in part by underlying environmental gradients (e.g., species richness). Contrary to previous food web models applied to single sites, none of the ecological drivers we considered were effective predictors of lake‐specific interactions perhaps indicating an important distinction between network model accuracy at regional and local extents. Finally, despite high spatial turnover in interactions, species’ roles were highly conserved across the study lakes demonstrating the potential of species’ roles for predicting community structure. These findings demonstrate how integrating species’ fundamental roles into trait‐based approaches may improve our predictions of ecological networks at local scales.

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Species’ roles in food webs show fidelity across a highly variable oak forest

Cited by 57 publications

References 51 publications

Ecological networks in motion: micro‐ and macroscopic variability across scales

Ecological networks in motion: micro‐ and macroscopic variability across scales

Analysing ecological networks of species interactions

Effects of species traits, motif profiles, and environment on spatial variation in multi‐trophic antagonistic networks

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