Recasting spatial food web ecology as an ecosystem science
2010
Massol, F. | Gravel, Dominique | Mouquet, N. | Cadotte, M.W. | Fukami, T. | Leibold, A. | Hydrobiologie (UR HYAX) ; Centre national du machinisme agricole, du génie rural, des eaux et forêts (CEMAGREF) | UQAR BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES UNIVERSITY TORONTO CAN ; Partenaires IRSTEA ; Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture (IRSTEA)-Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture (IRSTEA) | Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) | University of Toronto at Scarborough | Stanford University | University of Texas at Austin [Austin]
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Show more [+] Less [-]French. Food webs are complex systems in which organisms interact with each other and with the abiotic aspects of their environment, thus acting as the conduit for transfers of energy and nutrients through ecosystems. Classical approaches to food webs focus strongly on patterns and processes occurring at the community level rather than at the broader ecosystem scale. Recent developments in community ecology suggest that spatial processes may be important in affecting food web dynamics and affect ecosystems as well, thus leading to the idea of meta-ecosystems. Here, we make a synthesis on how the links between food web dynamics and spatial ecosystem dynamics may be studied through (i) identifying differences between metacommunity and landscape ecology approaches when dealing with food webs, (ii) arguing that a tighter synthesis of the two approaches is needed for a good understanding of how diversity, ecosystem process and trait distributions in landscapes are related, and (iii) laying out how this gap can be efficiently bridged under the framework of meta-ecosystems.
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