The stability of multitrophic communities under habitat loss

McWilliams, Christopher; Lurgi, Miguel; Montoya, José M.; Sauve, Alix; Montoya, Daniel

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-10370-2

Cited by 51 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…Resilience, variability, resistance, and persistence are all components of stability not examined here. Notably, these components do not necessarily covary with one another, particularly in disturbed systems (Donohue et al ; Lurgi et al ; Hillebrand et al ), and are not all related to network metrics (Sauve et al ; McWilliams et al ). For example, Sauve et al () found that neither modularity nor nestedness of hybrid networks was related to persistence and resilience.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural intensification drives changes in hybrid network robustness by modifying network structure

2019

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Within ecological communities, species engage in myriad interaction types, yet empirical examples of hybrid species interaction networks composed of multiple types of interactions are still scarce. A key knowledge gap is understanding how the structure and stability of such hybrid networks are affected by anthropogenic disturbance. Using 15,169 interaction observations, we constructed 16 hybrid herbivore‐plant‐pollinator networks along an agricultural intensification gradient to explore changes in network structure and robustness to local extinctions. We found that agricultural intensification led to declines in modularity but increases in nestedness and connectance. Notably, network connectance, a structural feature typically thought to increase robustness, caused declines in hybrid network robustness, but the directionality of changes in robustness along the gradient depended on the order of local species extinctions. Our results not only demonstrate the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance on hybrid network structure, but they also provide unexpected insights into the structure‐stability relationship of hybrid networks.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural intensification drives changes in hybrid network robustness by modifying network structure

2019

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“…An alternative explanation concerns differences in network complexity among fragments. Robustness is a component of network stability, and while a body of evidence supports the notion that network complexity hampers stability through effects of direct and indirect interactions (Fox and Olsen 2000, Melián and Bascompte 2002, Thébault and Fontaine 2010, Vieira and Almeida‐Neto 2015, McWilliams et al 2019), there is also evidence supporting the opposite idea (Dunne et al 2002, Allesina and Tang 2012); we found more complex networks (higher connectance and linkage density) in small, isolated fragments, which had a higher contribution in meta‐network robustness (Supplementary information). Thus, our results agree with the notion that greater complexity enhances stability (robustness in this case) and reinforces the assumptions about lower perturbation intensity in those habitat fragments.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robustness of a meta‐network to alternative habitat loss scenarios

Santos

Cagnolo

Roslin

et al. 2020

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Studying how habitat loss affects the tolerance of ecological networks to species extinction (i.e. their robustness) is key for our understanding of the influence of human activities on natural ecosystems. With networks typically occurring as local interaction networks interconnected in space (a meta-network), we may ask how the loss of specific habitat fragments affects the overall robustness of the meta-network. To address this question, for an empirical meta-network of plants, herbivores and natural enemies we simulated the removal of habitat fragments in increasing and decreasing order of area, age and connectivity for plant extinction and the secondary extinction of herbivores, natural enemies and their interactions. Meta-network robustness was characterized as the area under the curve of remnant species or interactions at the end of a fragment removal sequence. To pinpoint the effects of fragment area, age and connectivity, respectively, we compared the observed robustness for each removal scenario against that of a random sequence. The meta-network was more robust to the loss of old (i.e. long-fragmented), large, connected fragments than of young (i.e. recently fragmented), small, isolated fragments. Thus, young, small, isolated fragments may be particularly important to the conservation of species and interactions, while contrary to our expectations larger, more connected fragments contribute little to meta-network robustness. Our findings highlight the importance of young, small, isolated fragments as sources of species and interactions unique to the regional level. These effects may largely result from an unpaid extinction debt, whereby younger fragments are likely to lose species over time. Yet, there may also be more long-lasting effects from cultivated lands (e.g. water, fertilizers and restricted cattle grazing) and network complexity in small, isolated fragments. Such fragments may sustain important biological diversity in fragmented landscapes, but maintaining their conservation value may depend on adequate restoration strategies.

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“…However, regardless of such details, it follows from the structure of our model that habitat destruction likely affects species at the highest trophic levels the most, since apart from having fewer available patches for colonisation in the landscape, they must also cope with the problem of reduced prey availability. In line with this expectation, we found that habitat isolation deconstructed food webs from top to bottom, with species at higher trophic levels going extinct first (Ryser et al ., 2019; McWilliams et al ., 2019). Dispersal ability can also be seen as a measure of habitat connectivity, i.e.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Bayesian network approach to trophic metacommunities shows that habitat loss accelerates top species extinctions

2020

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We develop a novel approach to analyse trophic metacommunities, which allows us to explore how progressive habitat loss affects food webs. Our method combines classic metapopulation models on fragmented landscapes with a Bayesian network representation of trophic interactions for calculating local extinction rates. This means that we can repurpose known results from classic metapopulation theory for trophic metacommunities, such as ranking the habitat patches of the landscape with respect to their importance to the persistence of the metacommunity as a whole. We use this to study the effects of habitat loss, both on model communities and the plant‐mammal Serengeti food web dataset as a case study. Combining straightforward parameterisability with computational efficiency, our method permits the analysis of species‐rich food webs over large landscapes, with hundreds or even thousands of species and habitat patches, while still retaining much of the flexibility of explicit dynamical models.

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The stability of multitrophic communities under habitat loss

Cited by 51 publications

References 58 publications

Agricultural intensification drives changes in hybrid network robustness by modifying network structure

Agricultural intensification drives changes in hybrid network robustness by modifying network structure

Robustness of a meta‐network to alternative habitat loss scenarios

A Bayesian network approach to trophic metacommunities shows that habitat loss accelerates top species extinctions

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