Emergence of non-random structure in local food webs generated from randomly structured regional webs

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that high-resolution, empirical food webs possess a non-random network structure, typically characterized by uniform or exponential degree distributions. However, the empirical food webs that have been investigated for their structural properties represent local communities that are only a subset of a larger pool of regionally coexisting species. Here, we use a simple model to investigate the effects of regional food web structure on local food webs that are assembled by two simple processes: random immigration of species from a source web (regional food web), and random extinction of species within the local web. The model shows that local webs with non-random degree distributions can arise from randomly structured source webs. A comparison of local webs assembled from randomly structured source webs with local webs assembled from source webs generated by the niche model shows that the former have higher species richness at equilibrium, but have a nonlinear response to changing extinction rates. These results imply that the network structure of regional food webs can play a significant role in the assembly and dynamics of local webs in natural ecosystems. With natural landscapes becoming increasingly fragmented, understanding such structure may be a necessary key to understanding the maintenance and stability of local species diversity.