Contents 1. Introduction 2. The pelagic food web 2.1 The structure of the pelagic food web. 2.2 Phytoplankton community structure. 2.2.1 Bottom up determinants of phytoplankton size structure. 2.2.2 Top-down determinants of phytoplankton size structure. 2.3 Zooplankton of marine pelagic food webs 2.3.1 Protozoa. 2.3.2 Copepoda. 2.3.3 Tunicata. 2.3.4 Mesozooplankton feeding selectivity. 2.3.5 He...

The abiotic environment has strong influences on the growth, survival, behavior, and ecology of aquatic organisms. Biotic interactions and species life histories interact with abiotic factors to structure the food web. One measure of food-web structure is food-chain length. Several hypotheses predict a linear relationship between one environmental variable (e.g., disturbance or ecosystem size) ...

The structure of food webs is frequently described using phenomenological stochastic models. A prominent example, the niche model, was found to produce artificial food webs resembling real food webs according to a range of summary statistics. However, the size structure of food webs generated by the niche model and real food webs has not yet been rigorously compared. To fill this void, I use a ...

Given the unprecedented rate of species extinctions facing the planet, understanding the causes and consequences of species diversity in ecosystems is of paramount importance. Ecologists have investigated both the influence of environmental variables on species diversity and the influence of species diversity on ecosystem function and stability. These investigations have largely been carried ou...