Comparison of food webs constructed by evolution and by immigration

Authored by Alan J McKane, Craig R Powell

Date Published: 2009

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecocom.2009.01.002

Sponsors: United Kingdom Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Platforms: No platforms listed

Model Documentation: Other Narrative Mathematical description

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

We present results contrasting food webs constructed using the same model where the source of species was either evolution or immigration from a previously evolved species pool. The overall structure of the webs are remarkably similar, although we find some important differences which mainly relate to the percentage of basal and top species. Food webs assembled from evolved webs also show distinct plateaux in the number of tropic levels as the resources available to system increase, in contrast to evolved webs. By equating the resources available to basal species to area, we are able to examine the species-area curve created by each process separately. They are found to correspond to different regimes of the tri-phasic species-area curve. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Tags

Model stability Richness Ecological communities Species-area curves Long-term evolution Island biogeography Primary succession Stochastic-theory Accumulation