4.0 - Wearing Elton's Wellingtons: Why body size still matters in food webs

Abstract

Current interest in the role of body size in food webs is certainly not just a historical hangover. In fact, the importance of size as an organizing factor in food webs lay largely unexplored for a long time after Elton's suggestions were made. Ideas about trophic organization soon began to embrace the concepts of energy flow and community stability. Another significant consequence of the emphasis on energy flow and trophic level was the subtle transition from Elton's pyramid of numbers, to the description of communities in terms of pyramids of biomass. Organisms occurring within one size class in a community can be from different trophic positions in the various food chains to which they belong. The growing interest in size–abundance relationships has proceeded largely independently of other strands of food web ecology. Although, some of the work on possible mechanisms to explain biomass spectra has utilized theory involving trophic structure, with size-dependent feeding, in general, the body size–abundance relationship has not been approached as a food web problem.