Institute of Entomology, Biology Center, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Czech Republic; Department of Mathematics and Biomathematics, Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, Branišovská 31, 370 05 České Budějovice, Czech Republic.
J Theor Biol. 2014 Feb 21;343:127-37. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2013.11.020. Epub 2013 Dec 4.
Competition in di- and tri-trophic food web modules with many competing species is studied. The food web modules considered are apparent competition between n species sharing a single predator and a diamond-like food web with a single resource, a single top predator and many competing middle species. The predators have either fixed preferences for their prey, or they switch between available prey in a way that maximizes their fitness. Dependence of these food web dynamics on environmental carrying capacity and food web connectance is studied. The results predict that optimal flexible foraging strongly weakens apparent competition and promotes species coexistence. Food web robustness (defined here as the proportion of surviving species) does not decrease with increased connectance in these food-webs. Moreover, it is shown that flexible prey switching leads to the same population equilibria as in corresponding food webs with highly specialized predators. The results show that flexible foraging behavior by predators can have very strong impact on species richness, as well as the response of communities to changes in resource enrichment and food-web connectance when compared to the same food-web topology with inflexible top predators. Several results on global stability using Lyapunov functions are provided.
研究了具有许多竞争物种的二营养级和三营养级食物网模块中的竞争。所考虑的食物网模块包括：n 个共享单一捕食者的物种之间的明显竞争，以及具有单一资源、单一顶级捕食者和许多竞争中间物种的钻石状食物网。捕食者要么对猎物有固定的偏好，要么以最大限度地提高适应性的方式在可用猎物之间切换。研究了这些食物网动态对环境承载能力和食物网连接度的依赖性。研究结果表明，最优的灵活觅食强烈削弱了明显的竞争，促进了物种共存。在这些食物网中，食物网稳健性（这里定义为存活物种的比例）不会随连接度的增加而降低。此外，还表明，灵活的猎物转换会导致与具有高度专业化捕食者的相应食物网相同的种群平衡。研究结果表明，与具有不灵活顶级捕食者的相同食物网拓扑结构相比，捕食者灵活的觅食行为会对物种丰富度以及群落对资源丰富度和食物网连接度变化的反应产生非常强烈的影响。还提供了使用李雅普诺夫函数的全局稳定性的几个结果。
