Cattin Marie-France, Bersier Louis-Félix, Banasek-Richter Carolin, Baltensperger Richard, Gabriel Jean-Pierre
Institut de Zoologie, University of Neuchâtel, Rue Emile-Argand 11, CP2, CH-2007 Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
Nature. 2004 Feb 26;427(6977):835-9. doi: 10.1038/nature02327.
Food webs are descriptions of who eats whom in an ecosystem. Although extremely complex and variable, their structure possesses basic regularities. A fascinating question is to find a simple model capturing the underlying processes behind these repeatable patterns. Until now, two models have been devised for the description of trophic interactions within a natural community. Both are essentially based on the concept of ecological niche, with the consumers organized along a single niche dimension; for example, prey size. Unfortunately, they fail to describe adequately recent and high-quality data. Here, we propose a new model built on the hypothesis that any species' diet is the consequence of phylogenetic constraints and adaptation. Simple rules incorporating both concepts yield food webs whose structure is very close to real data. Consumers are organized in groups forming a nested hierarchy, which better reflects the complexity and multidimensionality of most natural systems.
食物网描述了生态系统中的捕食关系。尽管极其复杂且多变,但其结构具有基本规律。一个引人入胜的问题是找到一个简单模型来捕捉这些可重复模式背后的潜在过程。到目前为止,已经设计出两种模型来描述自然群落中的营养相互作用。这两种模型本质上都基于生态位的概念,消费者沿着单一的生态位维度进行组织;例如,猎物大小。不幸的是,它们无法充分描述最新的高质量数据。在此,我们提出一个基于以下假设构建的新模型:任何物种的饮食都是系统发育限制和适应性的结果。结合这两个概念的简单规则产生的食物网,其结构与实际数据非常接近。消费者被组织成形成嵌套层次结构的群体,这更好地反映了大多数自然系统的复杂性和多维性。