Relation between complexity and stability in food webs with adaptive behavior

Abstract

We investigate the influence of functional responses (Lotka–Volterra or Holling type), initial topological web structure (randomly connected or niche model), adaptive behavior (adaptive foraging and predator avoidance) and the type of constraints on the adaptive behavior (linear or nonlinear) on the stability and structure of food webs. Two kinds of stability are considered: one is the network robustness (i.e., the proportion of species surviving after population dynamics) and the other is the species deletion stability. When evaluating the network structure, we consider link density as well as the trophic level structure. We show that the types of functional responses and initial web structure do not have a large effect on the stability of food webs, but foraging behavior has a large stabilizing effect. It leads to a positive complexity–stability relationship whenever higher “complexity” implies more potential prey per species. The other type of adaptive behavior, predator avoidance behavior, makes food webs only slightly more stable. The observed link density after population dynamics depends strongly on the presence or absence of adaptive foraging, and on the type of constraints used. We also show that the trophic level structure is preserved under population dynamics with adaptive foraging.