We have very limited knowledge of how species interact in most communities and ecosystems despite trophic relationships being fundamental for linking biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. A promising approach to fill this gap is to predict interactions based on functional traits, but many questions remain about how well we can predict interactions for different taxa, ecosystems and amounts of input data. Here, we built a new traits-based model of trophic interactions for European vertebrates and found that even models calibrated with 0.1% of the interactions (100 out of 71 k) estimated the full European vertebrate food web reasonably well. However, predators were easier to predict than prey, especially for some clades (e.g. fowl and storks) and local food web connectance was consistently overestimated. Our results demonstrate the ability to rapidly generate food webs when empirical data are lacking-an important step towards a more complete and spatially explicit description of food webs.

Addressing the Eltonian shortfall with trait-based interaction models / Caron, Dominique; Maiorano, Luigi; Thuiller, Wilfried; Pollock, Laura J.. - In: ECOLOGY LETTERS. - ISSN 1461-023X. - 25:4(2022), pp. 889-899. [10.1111/ele.13966]

Addressing the Eltonian shortfall with trait-based interaction models

Luigi Maiorano;
2022

Abstract

We have very limited knowledge of how species interact in most communities and ecosystems despite trophic relationships being fundamental for linking biodiversity to ecosystem functioning. A promising approach to fill this gap is to predict interactions based on functional traits, but many questions remain about how well we can predict interactions for different taxa, ecosystems and amounts of input data. Here, we built a new traits-based model of trophic interactions for European vertebrates and found that even models calibrated with 0.1% of the interactions (100 out of 71 k) estimated the full European vertebrate food web reasonably well. However, predators were easier to predict than prey, especially for some clades (e.g. fowl and storks) and local food web connectance was consistently overestimated. Our results demonstrate the ability to rapidly generate food webs when empirical data are lacking-an important step towards a more complete and spatially explicit description of food webs.
2022
ecological networks; ecological predictions; food web; model transferability; terrestrial vertebrates; trait matching; trophic interactions
01 Pubblicazione su rivista::01a Articolo in rivista
Addressing the Eltonian shortfall with trait-based interaction models / Caron, Dominique; Maiorano, Luigi; Thuiller, Wilfried; Pollock, Laura J.. - In: ECOLOGY LETTERS. - ISSN 1461-023X. - 25:4(2022), pp. 889-899. [10.1111/ele.13966]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1697367
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