Konsequenzen des Artensterbens in komplexen Nahrungsnetzen

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The world’s ecosystems are exposed to perturbations including over-harvesting of populations, global warming and land-use intensification, which eventually cause extinctions. One of the currently most urgent scientific questions addresses the consequences of this biodiversity loss on the structure and functioning of ecosystems. Most current studies on consequences of extinctions focus on small functional groups, whereas natural ecosystems are organized as complex food webs with additive and compensatory effects of species interactively regulating responses to perturbations. This project aims at evaluating consequences of species extinctions in a recently compiled set of 30 complex natural food webs across different ecosystem types. Simulation approaches address the short-term (1 year) effects on other species biomasses (interaction strengths) and the long-term (30 years) risks of cascading secondary extinctions. Laboratory experiments evaluate these model predictions using forest soil food webs. For the first time, these approaches offer the opportunity to address the consequences of species extinctions combining (1) dynamic models of complex natural food webs for different ecosystem types, and (2) evaluations of model predictions using forest soil food webs.