Interaction strength combinations and the overfishing of a marine food web.

نویسندگان

  • Jordi Bascompte
  • Carlos J Melián
  • Enric Sala
چکیده

The stability of ecological communities largely depends on the strength of interactions between predators and their prey. Here we show that these interaction strengths are structured nonrandomly in a large Caribbean marine food web. Specifically, the cooccurrence of strong interactions on two consecutive levels of food chains occurs less frequently than expected by chance. Even when they occur, these strongly interacting chains are accompanied by strong omnivory more often than expected by chance. By using a food web model, we show that these interaction strength combinations reduce the likelihood of trophic cascades after the overfishing of top predators. However, fishing selectively removes predators that are overrepresented in strongly interacting chains. Hence, the potential for strong community-wide effects remains a threat.

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عنوان ژورنال:
  • Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

دوره 102 15  شماره 

صفحات  -

تاریخ انتشار 2005