On Volterra and D'Ancona's footsteps: The temporal and spatial complexity of ecological interactions and networks1

Abstract

In 1926, Vito Volterra published his monograph ‘Variazioni e fluttuazioni del numero d'individui in specie animali conviventi’ in the Memorie dell'Accademia dei Lincei, and the article ‘Fluctuations in the abundance of a species considered mathematically’ in the journal Nature. The quantitative ecology of complex trophic interactions was born in that year. However, he would have never considered the problem without the stimulus of a great zoologist and ecologist, his son in law Umberto D'Ancona. Following the footsteps of Volterra and D'Ancona, I will outline the research progress in the area of complex ecological interactions. Ecosystems can be viewed as spatial networks, in which local populations are connected by dispersal, or food webs, in which different species are connected by trophic interactions. Most of the scientific progress in the past century has been made by studying these two aspects. I will discuss that progress considering the following specific topics in a historical perspective: the role of space in consumer–resource interactions, population fluctuations and the predator's functional response, bottom‐up and top‐down control in the trophic chain, the network structures of ecosystems, the link between stability and ecosystem diversity and complexity. 1. Dedicated to the memory of Franco Scudo (1935–1998).