Potter Cove’s Heavyweights: Estimation of species’ interaction strength of an Antarctic food web
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Abstract
Understanding the complex interplay between structure and stability of marine food webs is crucial for assessing ecosystem resilience, particularly in the context of ongoing environmental changes. In the West Antarctic Peninsula, global warming has led to severe alterations in community composition, species distribution, and abundance over the last decades. In this study, we estimate the interaction strength within the Potter Cove (South Shetland Islands, Antarctica) food web to elucidate the roles of species in its structure and functioning. We use these estimates to calculate food web stability in response to perturbations, conducting sequential extinctions to quantify the importance of individual species based on changes in stability and food web fragmentation. We explore connections between interaction strength and key topological properties of the food web. Our findings reveal an asymmetric distribution of interaction strengths, with a prevalence of weak interactions and a few strong ones. Species exerting greater influence within the food web displayed higher degree and trophic similarity but occupied lower trophic levels and displayed lower omnivory levels (e.g., macroalgae and detritus). Extinction simulations revealed the key role of certain species, particularly amphipods and the black rockcod Notothenia coriiceps, as their removal led to significant changes in food web stability and network fragmentation. This study highlights the importance of considering species interaction strengths in assessing the stability of polar marine ecosystems. These insights have crucial implications for guiding monitoring and conservation strategies aimed at preserving the integrity of Antarctic marine ecosystems.
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Abstract
Understanding the complex interplay between structure and stability of marine food webs is crucial for assessing ecosystem resilience, particularly in the context of ongoing environmental changes. In the West Antarctic Peninsula, global warming has led to severe alterations in community composition, species distribution, and abundance over the last decades. In this study, we estimate the interaction strength within the Potter Cove (South Shetland Islands, Antarctica) food web to elucidate the roles of species in its structure and functioning. We use these estimates to calculate food web stability in response to perturbations, conducting sequential extinctions to quantify the importance of individual species based on changes in stability and food web fragmentation. We explore connections between interaction strength and key topological properties of the food web. Our findings reveal an asymmetric distribution of interaction strengths, with a prevalence of weak interactions and a few strong ones. Species exerting greater influence within the food web displayed higher degree and trophic similarity but occupied lower trophic levels and displayed lower omnivory levels (e.g., macroalgae and detritus). Extinction simulations revealed the key role of certain species, particularly amphipods and the black rockcod Notothenia coriiceps, as their removal led to significant changes in food web stability and network fragmentation. This study highlights the importance of considering species interaction strengths in assessing the stability of polar marine ecosystems. These insights have crucial implications for guiding monitoring and conservation strategies aimed at preserving the integrity of Antarctic marine ecosystems.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.32942/X2BC9X
Subjects
Life Sciences
Keywords
Antarctic ecosystem, Marine food web, Species interaction strength, Climate change., Marine food web, Species interaction strength, climate change
Dates
Published: 2024-03-16 15:33
License
CC BY Attribution 4.0 International
Additional Metadata
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Data and Code Availability Statement:
All source code and data that support the findings of this study are openly available in GitHub at https://github.com/123iamela/pottercove-IS and Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10790590.
Language:
English
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License: CC-BY-4.0