Department of Biology, Darmstadt University of Technology, Schnittspahnstr. 10, Darmstadt, 64287, Germany.
Ecol Lett. 2013 Sep;16(9):1126-34. doi: 10.1111/ele.12147. Epub 2013 Jul 3.
The stability of ecological communities depends strongly on quantitative characteristics of population interactions (type-II vs. type-III functional responses) and the distribution of body masses across species. Until now, these two aspects have almost exclusively been treated separately leaving a substantial gap in our general understanding of food webs. We analysed a large data set of arthropod feeding rates and found that all functional-response parameters depend on the body masses of predator and prey. Thus, we propose generalised functional responses which predict gradual shifts from type-II predation of small predators on equally sized prey to type-III functional-responses of large predators on small prey. Models including these generalised functional responses predict population dynamics and persistence only depending on predator and prey body masses, and we show that these predictions are strongly supported by empirical data on forest soil food webs. These results help unravelling systematic relationships between quantitative population interactions and large-scale community patterns.
生态群落的稳定性强烈依赖于种群相互作用的定量特征（II 型与 III 型功能反应）和物种间的体型分布。到目前为止，这两个方面几乎完全是分开处理的，这使得我们对食物网的整体理解存在很大差距。我们分析了大量的节肢动物取食率数据，发现所有功能反应参数都取决于捕食者和猎物的体重。因此，我们提出了广义功能反应，预测从小型捕食者对同等大小猎物的 II 型捕食到大型捕食者对小型猎物的 III 型功能反应的逐渐转变。包括这些广义功能反应的模型仅根据捕食者和猎物的体重来预测种群动态和持久性，我们还表明，这些预测得到了森林土壤食物网的实证数据的强烈支持。这些结果有助于揭示定量种群相互作用与大规模群落模式之间的系统关系。
