Food-web stability signals critical transitions in temperate shallow lakes

A principal aim of ecologists is to identify critical levels of environmental change beyond which ecosystems undergo radical shifts in their functioning. Both food-web theory and alternative stable states theory provide fundamental clues to mechanisms conferring stability to natural systems. Yet, it is unclear how the concept of food-web stability is associated with the resilience of ecosystems susceptible to regime change. Here, we use a combination of food web and ecosystem modelling to show that impending catastrophic shifts in shallow lakes are preceded by a destabilizing reorganization of interaction strengths in the aquatic food web. Analysis of the intricate web of trophic interactions reveals that only few key interactions, involving zooplankton, diatoms and detritus, dictate the deterioration of food-web stability. Our study exposes a tight link between food-web dynamics and the dynamics of the whole ecosystem, implying that trophic organization may serve as an empirical indicator of ecosystem resilience. How mechanisms underlying food-web stability may influence ecosystem regime shifts is not well understood. Combining food-web and ecosystem modelling, Kuiperet al. show that destabilizing reorganization of a small number of key trophic interactions precede catastrophic changes in shallow lake ecosystems.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  Nature Communications

• Publication date

  2015-07-15

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1038/ncomms8727PMID 26173798PMCID 4518252
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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