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Miguel B. Araújo Lab

Predicting the effects of environmental change on biodiversity

You are here: Home / Research Highlights / Human disturbances affect the topology of food webs

Human disturbances affect the topology of food webs

  • Ecology Letters (2022 )
  • Authors: Frederico Mestre, Alejandro Rozenfeld, Miguel B. Araújo
  • Link to article: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ele.14107

Networks describe nodes connected by links, with numbers of links per node, the degree, forming a range of distributions including random and scale-free. How network topologies emerge in natural systems still puzzles scientists. Based on previous theoretical simulations, we predict that scale-free food webs are favourably selected by random disturbances while random food webs are selected by targeted disturbances. We assume that lower human pressures are more likely associated with random disturbances, whereas higher pressures are associated with targeted ones. We examine these predictions using 351 empirical food webs, generally confirming our predictions. Should the topology of food webs respond to changes in the magnitude of disturbances in a predictable fashion, consistently across ecosystems and scales of organisation, it would provide a baseline expectation to understand and predict the consequences of human pressures on ecosystem dynamics.

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Research Highlights

Human disturbances affect the topology of food webs

Biogeography of bird and mammal trophic structures

Strategy games to improve environmental policymaking

Response of an Afro-Palearctic bird migrant to glaciation cycles

Improvements in reports of species redistribution under climate change are required

Books

Biodiversidade 2030

Biodiversidade 2030

Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions

Ecological Niches and Geographic Distributions

Spatial Conservation Prioritization

Spatial Conservation Prioritization

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