Coupled energy pathways and the resilience of size-structured food webs

By J. Blanchard, R. Law, Matthew D. Castle, S. Jennings. Theoretical Ecology, 2011

103 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Size-based food-web models, which focus on body size rather than species identity, capture the generalist and transient feeding interactions in most marine ecosystems and are well-supported by data. Here, we develop a size-based model that incorporates dynamic interactions between marine benthic (detritus-based) and pelagic (primary producer based) pathways to investigate how the coupling of these pathways affects food web stability and resilience. All model configurations produced stable steady-state size spectra. Resilience was measured by the return speed obtained from local stability analysis. Return times following large perturbations away from steady-state were also measured. Resilience varied nonlinearly with both predator and detrital coupling, and high resilience came from predators (1) feeding entirely in the slow benthic zone or (2) feeding across the two energy pathways, with most food coming from the fast pelagic pathway. When most of the energy flowed through the pelagic pathway, resilience was positively related to turnover rate. When most of the energy flowed through the benthic pathway, resilience was negatively related to turnover rate. Analysis of the effects of large perturbations revealed that resilience for pelagic ecosystems depended on the nature of the perturbation and the degree of benthic–pelagic coupling. Areas with very little or no benthic–pelagic coupling (e.g. deep seas or highly stratified water columns) may return more quickly following pulses of detrital fallout or primary production but could be much less resilient to the effects of human-induced mortality (harvesting).

Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4be345d566b6237ee79ba767f2e12b83b5263849

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology

In Global and Planetary Change

In Oceanography

Citations in the corpus

Can marine fisheries and aquaculture meet fish demand from a growing human population in a changing climate (2012, methodology): “Model background and details are given in Blanchard et al. (2009, 2011).”
Modelling climate change impacts on marine fish populations: process-based integration of ocean warming, acidification and other environmental drivers (2016, background): “809 Size spectrum models can investigate food web dynamics based on size structure (e.g. 810 Blanchard et al., 2010), but representation of other properties that affect interactions is 811 currently limited.”
The theoretical foundations for size spectrum models of fish communities (2016, unknown): “benthic (Blanchard et al. 2011).”
Projecting changes in the distribution and productivity of living marine resources: A critical review of the suite of modelling approaches used in the large European project VECTORS (2016, background): “Changes in the productivity and changes in the distribution of a species are likely to be strongly coupled (Blanchard et al., 2011) but the processes causing the former and latter may differ.”
Sizing up the ecological role of sharks as predators (2014, background): “Diffuse predation according to a prey size window and a predator to prey size distribution are ubiquitous features of size spectra models of energy flow in aquatic ecosystems (Blanchard et al. 2011).”