Aquatic Food Webs An Ecosystem Approach

by Belgrano, Andrea; Scharler, Ursula M.; Dunne, Jennifer; Ulanowicz, Robert E.

• ISBN13: 9780198564836
• ISBN10: 019856483X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-23
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This volume provides a current synthesis of theoretical and empirical food web research. Whether they are binary systems or weighted networks, food webs are of particular interest to ecologists in providing a macroscopic view of ecosystems. They describe interactions between species and their environment, and subsequent advances in the understanding of their structure, function, and dynamics are of vital importance to ecosystem management and conservation. Aquatic Food Webs provides a synthesis of the current issues in food web theory and its applications, covering issues of structure, function, scaling, complexity, and stability in the contexts of conservation, fisheries, and climate. Although the focus of this volume is upon aquatic food webs (where many of the recent advances have been made), any ecologist with an interest in food web theory and its applications will find the issues addressed in this book of value and use. This advanced textbook is suitable for graduate level students as well as professional researchers in community, ecosystem, and theoretical ecology, in aquatic ecology, and in conservation biology.

Author Biography

Andrea Belgrano is a Researcher at the National Center for Genome Resources, University of New Mexico. Ursula Scharler is a Fellow of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center at the University of Maryland. Jennifer Dunne is an ecologist with interests in computational ecology and ecoinformatics. She is a co-founder and the assistant director of the Pacific Ecoinformatics and Computational Ecology Lab, a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute, and a principal investigator at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. Robert E. Ulanowicz is Professor of Theoretical Ecology with the University of Maryland's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. His current interests include network analysis of trophic exchanges in ecosystems, information theory as applied to ecological systems, the thermodynamics of living systems, causality in living systems, and modelling subtropical wetland ecosystems in Florida and Belize.

Table of Contents

Foreword	v
Michel Loreau
Contributors	ix
Introduction	1	(4)
Andrea Belgrano
PART I Structure and function	5	(62)
Biosimplicity via stoichiometry: the evolution of food-web structure and processes	7	(12)
James J. Elser
Dag O. Hessen
Spatial structure and dynamics in a marine food web	19	(6)
Carlos J. Melian
Jordi Bascompte
Pedro Jordano
Role of network analysis in comparative ecosystem ecology of estuaries	25	(16)
Robert R. Christian
Daniel Baird
Joseph Luczkovich
Jeffrey C. Johnson
Ursula M. Scharler
Robert E. Ulanowicz
Food webs in lakes---seasonal dynamics and the impact of climate variability	41	(10)
Dietmar Straile
Pattern and process in food webs: evidence from running waters	51	(16)
Guy Woodward
Ross Thompson
Colin R. Townsend
Alan G. Hildrew
PART II Examining food-web theories	67	(48)
Some random thoughts on the statistical analysis of food-web data	69	(4)
Andrew R. Solow
Analysis of size and complexity of randomly constructed food webs by information theoretic metrics	73	(13)
James T. Morris
Robert R. Christian
Robert E. Ulanowicz
Size-based analyses of aquatic food webs	86	(12)
Simon Jennings
Food-web theory in marine ecosystems	98	(17)
Jason S. Link
William T. Stockhausen
Elizabeth T. Methratta
PART III Stability and diversity in food webs	115	(84)
Modeling food-web dynamics: complexity--stability implications	117	(13)
Jennifer A. Dunne
Ulrich Brose
Richard J. Williams
Neo D. Martinez
Is biodiversity maintained by food-web complexity?---the adaptive food-web hypothesis	130	(13)
Michio Kondoh
Climate forcing, food web structure, and community dynamics in pelagic marine ecosystems	143	(27)
L. Ciannelli
D. O. Hjermann
P. Lehodey
G. Ottersen
J. T. Duffy-Anderson
N. C. Stenseth
Food-web theory provides guidelines for marine conservation	170	(14)
Enric Sala
George Sugihara
Biodiversity and aquatic food webs	184	(15)
Helmut Hillebrand
Jonathan B. Shurin
PART IV Concluding remarks	199	(9)
Ecological network analysis: an escape from the machine	201	(7)
Robert E. Ulanowicz
Afterword	208	(3)
Mathew A. Leibold
References	211	(44)
Index	255