Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 8041, New Zealand.
Québec Centre for Biodiversity Sciences, McGill University, Montréal, H3A 0G4, Canada.
Nat Commun. 2018 Jul 4;9(1):2603. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-05056-0.
Although the structure of empirical food webs can differ between ecosystems, there is growing evidence of multiple ways in which they also exhibit common topological properties. To reconcile these contrasting observations, we postulate the existence of a backbone of interactions underlying all ecological networks-a common substructure within every network comprised of species playing similar ecological roles-and a periphery of species whose idiosyncrasies help explain the differences between networks. To test this conjecture, we introduce a new approach to investigate the structural similarity of 411 food webs from multiple environments and biomes. We first find significant differences in the way species in different ecosystems interact with each other. Despite these differences, we then show that there is compelling evidence of a common backbone of interactions underpinning all food webs. We expect that identifying a backbone of interactions will shed light on the rules driving assembly of different ecological communities.
尽管经验性食物网的结构在不同生态系统之间可能存在差异，但越来越多的证据表明，它们还表现出多种共同的拓扑属性。为了调和这些相互矛盾的观察结果，我们假设所有生态网络都存在一个相互作用的骨干——每个网络中由扮演相似生态角色的物种组成的共同亚结构，以及一个由物种组成的外围，这些物种的特殊性有助于解释网络之间的差异。为了验证这一假设，我们引入了一种新的方法来研究来自多个环境和生物群落的 411 个食物网的结构相似性。我们首先发现，不同生态系统中的物种之间相互作用的方式存在显著差异。尽管存在这些差异，但我们随后表明，有令人信服的证据表明，所有食物网都有一个共同的相互作用骨干。我们预计，确定相互作用的骨干将有助于揭示驱动不同生态群落组装的规则。
