Horn Sabine, de la Vega Camille, Asmus Ragnhild, Schwemmer Philipp, Enners Leonie, Garthe Stefan, Binder Kirsten, Asmus Harald
Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, WaddenSea Station Sylt, List/ Sylt, Germany.
Research and Technology Centre (FTZ), University of Kiel, Büsum, Germany.
PLoS One. 2017 May 10;12(5):e0176381. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176381. eCollection 2017.
The determination of food web structures using Ecological Network Analysis (ENA) is a helpful tool to get insight into complex ecosystem processes. The intertidal area of the Wadden Sea is structured into diverse habitat types which differ in their ecological functioning. In the present study, six different intertidal habitats (i.e. cockle field, razor clam field, mud flat, mussel bank, sand flat and seagrass meadow) were analyzed using ENA to determine similarities and characteristic differences in the food web structure of the systems. All six systems were well balanced between their degree of organization and their robustness. However, they differed in their detailed features. The cockle field and the mussel bank exhibited a strong dependency on external imports. The razor clam field appeared to be a rather small system with low energy transfer. In the mud flat microphytobenthos was used as a main food source and the system appeared to be sensitive to perturbations. Bird predation was the most pronounced in the sand flat and the seagrass meadow and led to an increase in energy transfer and parallel trophic cycles in these habitats. Habitat diversity appears to be an important trait for the Wadden Sea as each subsystem seems to have a specific role in the overall functioning of the entire ecosystem.
利用生态网络分析（ENA）确定食物网结构是深入了解复杂生态系统过程的有用工具。瓦登海的潮间带区域由多种栖息地类型构成，这些栖息地在生态功能上各有不同。在本研究中，运用ENA对六种不同的潮间带栖息地（即鸟蛤场、蛏场、泥滩、贻贝滩、沙滩和海草草甸）进行了分析，以确定这些系统食物网结构的相似性和特征差异。所有六个系统在组织程度和稳健性之间都保持着良好的平衡。然而，它们在细节特征上存在差异。鸟蛤场和贻贝滩对外部输入有很强的依赖性。蛏场似乎是一个能量传递较低的相对较小的系统。在泥滩中，微型底栖藻类被用作主要食物来源，并且该系统似乎对干扰很敏感。在沙滩和海草草甸中，鸟类捕食最为显著，导致这些栖息地的能量传递增加和平行营养循环。栖息地多样性似乎是瓦登海的一个重要特征，因为每个子系统在整个生态系统的整体功能中似乎都有特定作用。
