Food webs: linkage, interaction strength and community infrastructure.

Detritus food webs in conventional and no-tillage agroecosystems. Reciprocal subsidies: dynamic interdependence between terrestrial and aquatic food webs. Food webs: reconciling the structure and function of biodiversity. Does food web theory work for marine ecosystems? Mar. These results indicate that knowledge of dynamically shifting food webs is crucial for understanding temporally varying roles of ‘core species’ in ecosystem processes. The substantial shifts of network structure entailed alternations of spider species located at the core positions within the entangled webs of interactions. Those modules differed in detritus/grazing food chain properties, forming complex fission–fusion dynamics of belowground and aboveground energy channels across the seasons. The networks were compartmentalized into modules (groups) of closely interacting predators and prey in each month. On the basis of high-throughput detection of prey DNA from 1,556 spider individuals collected in a grassland ecosystem, we reconstructed dynamics of interaction networks involving, in total, 50 spider species and 974 prey species and strains through 8 months. Here, we show that dynamics of species-rich predator–prey interactions can be characterized by remarkable network structural changes and alternations of species with greatest impacts on community processes. However, it has remained a major challenge to reveal how species-rich networks of predator–prey interactions are continually reshaped through time in the wild. Uncovering the network architecture of such trophic interactions has been recognized as the essential step for exploring species with great impacts on ecosystem-level phenomena and functions. In nature, entangled webs of predator–prey interactions constitute the backbones of ecosystems.

Predator vs prey card game