• Home
  • People
    • Miguel Bastos Araújo
    • Lab members
  • Research
    • Publications
    • Infrastructure
    • Projects
      • IberianPonds
      • Iberia Change
        • Data_Iberia
        • Data_Spain
  • Lectures
  • Consulting
  • Blog
  • Contact

Miguel B. Araújo Lab

Predicting the effects of environmental change on biodiversity

You are here: Home / Research Highlights / The marine fish food web is globally connected

The marine fish food web is globally connected

  • Nature Ecology and Evolution (2019 )
  • Authors: Camille Albouy, Philippe Archambault, Ward Appeltans, Miguel B. Araújo, David Beauchesne, Kevin Cazelles, Alyssa R. Cirtwill, Marie-Josée Fortin, Nuria Galiana, Shawn J. Leroux, Loïc Pellissier, Timothée Poisot, Daniel B. Stouffer, Spencer A. Wood & Dominique Gravel
  • Link to article: http://www.stoufferlab.org/pdfs/Albouy-2019-Nature.Ecol.Evol-3-1153.pdf

The productivity of marine ecosystems and the services they provide to humans are largely dependent on complex interactions between prey and predators. These are embedded in a diverse network of trophic interactions, resulting in a cascade of events following perturbations such as species extinction. The sheer scale of oceans, however, precludes the characterization of marine feeding networks through de novo sampling. This effort ought instead to rely on a combination of extensive data and inference. Here we investigate how the distribution of trophic interactions at the global scale shapes the marine fish food web structure. We hypothesize that the heterogeneous distribution of species ranges in biogeographic regions should concentrate interactions in the warmest areas and within species groups. We find that the inferred global metaweb of marine fish—that is, all possible potential feeding links between co-occurring species—is highly connected geographically with a low degree of spatial modularity. Metrics of network structure correlate with sea surface temperature and tend to peak towards the tropics. In contrast to open-water communities, coastal food webs have greater interaction redundancy, which may confer robustness to species extinction. Our results suggest that marine ecosystems are connected yet display some resistance to perturbations because of high robustness at most locations.

0.0
00

News

  • The Grand Jury of the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity Meets in Berlin
  • L’Oréal UNESCO Award For Women in Science
  • Miguel Araújo appointed Chair of one of 4 Scientific Councils of FCT
  • Position available: PhD candidate in Community Ecology and Systematic Conservation Planning
  • Position available: Assistant Researcher for NaturaConnect

Outreach

  • Além Risk (Beyond Risk) on RTP
  • 50 years of protected areas in Portugal
  • 200 anniversary of Alfred Russel Wallace
  • Além Risco (Beyond Risk) project
  • Is the planet full? TV programme

Opportunities

  • Position available: PhD candidate in Community Ecology and Systematic Conservation Planning
  • Position available: Assistant Researcher for NaturaConnect
  • La Caixa PhD studentship
  • Position available: Technician
  • Call for access to Iberian Pond data (2022)

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

‹ ›
Visitors:

Copyright © 2023 · Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in