Far-ranging generalist top predators enhance the stability of meta-foodwebs

Andreas Brechtel,Barbara Drossel,Thilo Gross

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-48731-y

Andreas Brechtel, Barbara Drossel + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-48731-y

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Abstract

Identifying stabilizing factors in foodwebs is a long standing challenge with wide implications for community ecology and conservation. Here, we investigate the stability of spatially resolved meta-foodwebs with far-ranging super-predators for whom the whole meta-foodwebs appears to be a single habitat. By using a combination of generalized modeling with a master stability function approach, we are able to efficiently explore the asymptotic stability of large classes of realistic many-patch meta-foodwebs. We show that meta-foodwebs with far-ranging top predators are more stable than those with localized top predators. Moreover, adding far-ranging generalist top predators to a system can have a net stabilizing effect. These results highlight the importance of top predator conservation.

Highlights

A persistent theme in community ecology is the quest to understand the factors that stabilize foodwebs
Mathematical modelling has been focussing for many years on classical metapopulation models[20,21], island biogeography[22], and movement ecology[23]
In the following we compare the mean stability of systems with a global top predator to that of systems with a local top predator or none at all

Summary

Introduction

A persistent theme in community ecology is the quest to understand the factors that stabilize foodwebs. The topic of foodweb stability has gained renewed urgency by recent papers raising concerns that past perturbations have led to the direct loss of species but have left the respective systems more fragile. This increases the impact of future perturbations, leading to further and possibly bigger losses[12,13]. Top predators are often generalists which connect and balance biomass from different types of specialist predators on lower trophic levels[18] Thereby they act at the apex point of weakly-linked long loops in foodwebs which are thought to be a stabilizing motif 9. While a landscape may appear as a complex network of many habitat patches from the perspective of a mouse it only consists of a single patch from the perspective of an eagle circling overhead

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