Bascompte Jordi, Stouffer Daniel B
Integrative Ecology Group, Estación Biológica de Doñana, CSIC, c/ Americo Vespucio s/n, 41080 Sevilla, Spain.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2009 Jun 27;364(1524):1781-7. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0226.
Global change has created a severe biodiversity crisis. Species are driven extinct at an increasing rate, and this has the potential to cause further coextinction cascades. The rate and shape of these coextinction cascades depend very much on the structure of the networks of interactions across species. Understanding network structure and how it relates to network disassembly, therefore, is a priority for system-level conservation biology. This process of network collapse may indeed be related to the process of network build-up, although very little is known about both processes and even less about their relationship. Here we review recent work that provides some preliminary answers to these questions. First, we focus on network assembly by emphasizing temporal processes at the species level, as well as the structural building blocks of complex ecological networks. Second, we focus on network disassembly as a consequence of species extinctions or habitat loss. We conclude by emphasizing some general rules of thumb that can help in building a comprehensive framework to understand the responses of ecological networks to global change.
全球变化已造成严重的生物多样性危机。物种正以越来越快的速度走向灭绝，这有可能引发进一步的共灭绝级联效应。这些共灭绝级联效应的速度和形式在很大程度上取决于物种间相互作用网络的结构。因此，了解网络结构及其与网络解体的关系，是系统层面保护生物学的首要任务。网络崩溃的这一过程可能确实与网络形成过程相关，尽管对这两个过程了解甚少，对它们之间的关系更是知之甚少。在此，我们回顾近期的研究工作，这些工作为这些问题提供了一些初步答案。首先，我们通过强调物种层面的时间过程以及复杂生态网络的结构组成部分来关注网络形成。其次，我们关注物种灭绝或栖息地丧失导致的网络解体。最后，我们强调一些经验法则，这些法则有助于构建一个全面的框架，以理解生态网络对全球变化的响应。
