Abstract
Intervality of a food web is related to the number of trophic dimensions characterizing the niches in a community. We introduce here a mathematically robust measure for food web intervality. It has previously been noted that empirical food webs are not strictly interval; however, upon comparison to suitable null hypotheses, we conclude that empirical food webs actually do exhibit a strong bias toward contiguity of prey, that is, toward intervality. Further, our results strongly suggest that empirically observed species and their diets can be mapped onto a single dimension. This finding validates a critical assumption in the recently proposed static niche model and provides guidance for ongoing efforts to develop dynamic models of ecosystems. © 2006 by The National Academy of Sciences of the USA.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 19015-19020 |
Journal | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |
Volume | 103 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 12 Dec 2006 |
Keywords
- Networks
- Niche dimensions
- Predator-prey
- Universality