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Drought rewires the cores of food webs

Nature Climate Change volume 6, pages 875–878 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Droughts are intensifying across the globe1,2, with potentially devastating implications for freshwater ecosystems3,4. We used new network science approaches to investigate drought impacts on stream food webs and explored potential consequences for web robustness to future perturbations. The substructure of the webs was characterized by a core of richly connected species5 surrounded by poorly connected peripheral species. Although drought caused the partial collapse of the food webs6, the loss of the most extinction-prone peripheral species triggered a substantial rewiring of interactions within the networks’ cores. These shifts in species interactions in the core conserved the underlying core/periphery substructure and stability of the drought-impacted webs. When we subsequently perturbed the webs by simulating species loss in silico, the rewired drought webs were as robust as the larger, undisturbed webs. Our research unearths previously unknown compensatory dynamics arising from within the core that could underpin food web stability in the face of environmental perturbations.

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Figure 1: Core/periphery structure of control and drought food webs.
Figure 2: Drought caused species realignment in substructures.
Figure 3: Drought reduced the link density and caused further restructuring in the core.

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Acknowledgements

X.L. and C.G. were supported by Queen Mary University of London. X.L. was additionally supported by the Chinese Scholarship Council and C.G. was additionally supported by the Freshwater Biological Association. This paper is a contribution to Imperial College’s Grand Challenges in Ecosystems and the Environment initiative. The project was supported by a FBA/Natural Environmental Research Council (NERC) postdoctoral fellowship to M.E.L. and NERC grants NER/B/S/2002/00215 and NE/J02256X/1. We would like to thank P. Armitage, F. K. Edwards and R. Harris for their contribution to the original experimental project and J. M. Olesen for his comments on the manuscript.

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Author notes

  1. Xueke Lu and Clare Gray: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK

    Xueke Lu, Raúl J. Mondragón & Athen Ma

  2. School of Biological and Chemical Science, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK

    Clare Gray

  3. Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Buckhurst Road, Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7PY, UK

    Clare Gray & Guy Woodward

  4. water@leeds, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

    Lee E. Brown

  5. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK

    Mark E. Ledger & Alexander M. Milner

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  1. Xueke Lu
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Contributions

M.E.L. and A.M.M. conducted the mesocosm experiments. M.E.L., L.E.B., A.M.M. and G.W. generated the food web data set. R.J.M. and A.M. designed the network analyses. X.L. implemented the network research. X.L. and C.G. analysed the results. C.G., M.E.L. and A.M. wrote the manuscript with input from all authors. All authors discussed the results and reviewed the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Xueke Lu, Clare Gray or Athen Ma.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Lu, X., Gray, C., Brown, L. et al. Drought rewires the cores of food webs. Nature Clim Change 6, 875–878 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate3002

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