Woodward Guy, Ebenman Bo, Emmerson Mark, Montoya Jose M, Olesen Jens M, Valido Alfredo, Warren Philip H
School of Biological Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK, E1 4NS.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2005 Jul;20(7):402-9. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2005.04.005.
Body size determines a host of species traits that can affect the structure and dynamics of food webs, and other ecological networks, across multiple scales of organization. Measuring body size provides a relatively simple means of encapsulating and condensing a large amount of the biological information embedded within an ecological network. Recently, important advances have been made by incorporating body size into theoretical models that explore food web stability, the patterning of energy fluxes, and responses to perturbations. Because metabolic constraints underpin body-size scaling relationships, metabolic theory offers a potentially useful new framework within which to develop novel models to describe the structure and functioning of ecological networks and to assess the probable consequences of biodiversity change.
体型决定了许多物种特征，这些特征会在多个组织尺度上影响食物网以及其他生态网络的结构和动态。测量体型提供了一种相对简单的方法，用于概括和浓缩生态网络中嵌入的大量生物信息。最近，通过将体型纳入探索食物网稳定性、能量通量模式以及对扰动响应的理论模型，已经取得了重要进展。由于代谢限制是体型缩放关系的基础，代谢理论提供了一个潜在有用的新框架，可在其中开发新模型来描述生态网络的结构和功能，并评估生物多样性变化可能产生的后果。
