Drought alters the structure and functioning of complex food webs
Drought alters the structure and functioning of complex food webs
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DOI：
10.1038/nclimate1684
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发表时间：
2013-03-01
影响因子：
30.7
通讯作者：
Woodward, Guy
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Ledger, Mark E.;Brown, Lee E.;Woodward, Guy
气候变化预计将使世界许多地区在未来几十年更加干燥（1，2）。更严重的干旱将改变河流（3），在更高的（多物种）组织水平（4）上可能产生严重但基本上未知的后果。在这里，我们通过实验展示了干旱的加剧如何改变淡水食物网的基本结构和功能（生物量通量动态）-物种网络及其相互作用（5）。干旱造成物种和环节的大量丧失，特别是捕食者的丧失，导致食物网的部分崩溃。总资源消费者的生物量通量也强烈抑制干扰，但几个网络级的属性（如连通性和相互作用的多样性）是保守的，消费者资源的保真度和大量的重新配置的流量内的网络生产转移到大小谱从大到小的物种。我们的研究表明，干燥的气候可能对淡水生态系统的功能产生深远的影响。
Climate change is expected to make many regions of the world much drier over coming decades(1,2). More intense drought would transform rivers(3) with potentially severe but largely unknown consequences at higher (multispecies) levels of organization(4). Here we show experimentally how the intensification of drought may alter the underlying structure and functioning (biomass flux dynamics) of freshwater food webs-networks of species and their interactions(5). Drought triggered substantial losses of species and links, especially among predators, leading to the partial collapse of the food webs. Total resource-consumer biomass flux was also strongly suppressed by disturbance, yet several network-level properties (such as connectance and interaction diversity) were conserved, driven by consumer resource fidelity and a substantial reconfiguration of fluxes within the webs as production shifted down the size spectrum from large to small species. Our research demonstrates that drier climates could have far-reaching impacts on the functioning of freshwater ecosystems.