Reconciling the omnivory-stability debate

American Naturalist

Volumn 179, Issue 1, 2012, Pages 22-37

  Gellner, Gabriel ^a   McCann, Kevin ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH   (Canada)

Author keywords

Community matrix; Food web; Interaction strength; Module; Omnivory; Stability

Indexed keywords

COMMUNITY ECOLOGY; ECOLOGICAL THEORY; EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS; FOOD WEB; MATRIX; NUMERICAL METHOD; OMNIVORY; PARAMETERIZATION; TROPHIC INTERACTION;

ANIMAL; ARTICLE; BIOLOGICAL MODEL; BIOTA; FOOD CHAIN; FOOD PREFERENCE;

ANIMALS; BIOTA; FOOD CHAIN; FOOD PREFERENCES; MODELS, BIOLOGICAL;

EID: 83655192569     PISSN: 00030147     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/663191     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Berlow, E. L., A. M. Neutel, J. E. Cohen, P. C. de Ruiter, B. O. Ebenman, M. Emmerson, J. W. Fox, V. A. A. Jansen, J. I. Jones, and G. D. Kokkoris. 2004. Interaction strengths in food webs: issues and opportunities. Ecology 73:585-598.
2. Brose, U., R. J. Williams, and N. D. Martinez. 2006. Allometric scaling enhances stability in complex food webs. Ecology Letters 9:1228-1236.
3. DeAngelis, D. L., and J. C. Waterhouse. 1987. Equilibrium and nonequilibrium concepts in ecological models. Ecological Monographs 57:1-21.
4. Dunne, J. A., R. J. Williams, and N. D. Martinez. 2004. Network structure and robustness of marine food webs. Marine Ecology Progress Series 273:291-302.
5. Emmerson, M., and J. M. Yearsley. 2004.Weak interactions, omnivory and emergent food-web properties. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 271:397-405, doi:10.1098/rspb.2003.2592.
6. Fagan, W. F. 1997. Omnivory as a stabilizing feature of natural communities. American Naturalist 150:554-567.
7. Grimm, V., and C. Wissel. 1997. Babel, or the ecological stability discussions: an inventory and analysis of terminology and a guide for avoiding confusion. Oecologia (Berlin) 109:323-334, doi: 10.1007/s004420050090.
8. Haydon, D. 1994. Pivotal assumptions determining the relationship between stability and complexity: an analytical synthesis of the stability-complexity debate. American Naturalist 144:14-29, doi: 10.2307/2462798.
9. Holyoak, M., and S. Sachdev. 1998. Omnivory and the stability of simple food webs. Oecologia (Berlin) 117:413-419.
10. Ives, A. R., and S. R. Carpenter. 2007. Stability and diversity of ecosystems. Science 317:58-62, doi:10.1126/science.1133258.
11. Jeffries, C. 1974. Qualitative stability and digraphs in model ecosystems. Ecology 55:1415-1419, doi:10.2307/1935470.
12. Levins, R. 1974. The qualitative analysis of partially specified systems. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 231:123-138.
13. Logofet, D. O., and N. B. Ulianov. 1982. Sign stability in model ecosystems: a complete class of sign-stable patterns. Ecological Modelling 16:173-189, doi:10.1016/0304-3800(82)90007-2.
14. May, R. M. 2001. Stability and complexity in model ecosystems. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
15. McCann, K., and A. Hastings. 1997. Re-evaluating the omnivorystability relationship in food webs. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 264:1249-1254, doi:10.2307/50878.
16. McCann, K. S. 2000. The diversity-stability debate. Nature 405:228-233, doi:10.1038/35012234.
17. McNaughton, S. J. 1977. Diversity and stability of ecological communities: a comment on the role of empiricism in ecology. American Naturalist 111:515-525.
18. Neutel, A.-M., J. A. P. Heesterbeek, J. van de Koppel, G. Hoenderboom, A. Vos, C. Kaldeway, F. Berendse, and P. C. de Ruiter. 2007. Reconciling complexity with stability in naturally assembling food webs. Nature 449:599-602, doi:10.1038/nature06154.
19. Nickalls, R. W. D. 1993. A new approach to solving the cubic: Cardan's solution revealed. Mathematical Gazette 77:354-359, doi: 10.2307/3619777.
20. Otto, S. B., B. C. Rall, and U. Brose. 2007. Allometric degree distributions facilitate food-web stability. Nature 450:1226-1229, doi: 10.1038/nature06359.
21. Pimm, S. L., and J. H. Lawton. 1978. On feeding on more than one trophic level. Nature 275:542-544, doi:10.1038/275542a0.
22. Polis, G. A. 1991. Complex trophic interactions in deserts: an empirical critique of food-web theory. American Naturalist 138:123-155, doi:10.2307/2462536.
23. Sprules, W. G., and J. E. Bowerman. 1988. Omnivory and food chain length in zooplankton food webs. Ecology 69:418-426.
24. Tanabe, K., and T. Namba. 2005. Omnivory creates chaos in simple food web models. Ecology 86:3411-3414, doi:10.1890/05-0720.
25. Thompson, R. M., M. Hemberg, B. M. Starzomski, and J. B. Shurin. 2007. Trophic levels and trophic tangles: the prevalence of omnivory in real food webs. Ecology 88:612-617.
26. Tilman, D., P. B. Reich, and J. M. H. Knops. 2006. Biodiversity and ecosystem stability in a decade-long grassland experiment. Nature 441:629-632, doi:10.1038/nature04742.
27. Townsend, S. E., D. T. Haydon, and L. Matthews. 2010. On the generality of stability-complexity relationships in Lotka-Volterra ecosystems. Journal of Theoretical Biology 267:243-251.
28. Vandermeer, J. 2006. Omnivory and the stability of food webs. Journal of Theoretical Biology 238:497-504.
29. Yodzis, P. 1981. The stability of real ecosystems. Nature 289:674-676, doi:10.1038/289674a0.
30. Yodzis, P., and S. Innes. 1992. Body size and consumer-resource dynamics. American Naturalist 139:1151-1175, doi:10.2307/ 2462335.