Environmentally-induced noise dampens and reddens with increasing trophic level in a complex food web
Kuparinen, A., Perälä, T., Martinez, N. D., & Valdovinos, F. S. (2019). Environmentally-induced noise dampens and reddens with increasing trophic level in a complex food web. Oikos, 128(4), 608-620. https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.05575
Published in
OikosDate
2019Copyright
© 2018 The Authors
Stochastic variability of key abiotic factors including temperature, precipitation and the availability of light and nutrients greatly influences species’ ecological function and evolutionary fate. Despite such influence, ecologists have typically ignored the effect of abiotic stochasticity on the structure and dynamics of ecological networks. Here we help to fill that gap by advancing the theory of how abiotic stochasticity, in the form of environmental noise, affects the population dynamics of species within food webs. We do this by analysing an allometric trophic network model of Lake Constance subjected to positive (red), negative (blue), and non‐autocorrelated (white) abiotic temporal variability (noise) introduced into the carrying capacity of basal species. We found that, irrespective of the colour of the introduced noise, the temporal variability of the species biomass within the network both reddens (i.e. its positive autocorrelation increases) and dampens (i.e. the magnitude of variation decreases) as the environmental noise is propagated through the food web by its feeding interactions from the bottom to the top. The reddening reflects a buffering of the noise‐induced population variability by complex food web dynamics such that non‐autocorrelated oscillations of noise‐free deterministic dynamics become positively autocorrelated. Our research helps explain frequently observed red variability of natural populations by suggesting that ecological processing of environmental noise through food webs with a range of species’ body sizes reddens population variability in nature.
...


Publisher
BlackwellISSN Search the Publication Forum
0030-1299Keywords
Publication in research information system
https://converis.jyu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/28679038
Metadata
Show full item recordCollections
Additional information about funding
The research was funded by the Academy of Finland (AK), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (AK), European Research Council (COMPLEX‐FISH 400820 to AK) and the USA National Science Foundation (DE SG0016247) and Department of Energy (ICER‐1313830) (to NDM).License
Related items
Showing items with similar title or keywords.
-
A comparison of the impacts of introduced signal crayfish and native noble crayfish in boreal lake ecosystems
Ercoli, Fabio (University of Jyväskylä, 2014) -
On stochastic modelling and reliability of systems with moving cracked material
Tirronen, Maria (University of Jyväskylä, 2015)In many industrial processes, such as printing paper, a material travels through a series of rollers unsupported and under longitudinal tension. The value of the tension has an important role in the system behaviour, ... -
Fishing triggers trophic cascade in terms of variation, not abundance in an allometric trophic network model
Uusi-Heikkilä, Silva; Perälä, Tommi; Kuparinen, Anna (Canadian Science Publishing, 2021)Trophic cascade studies often rely on linear food chains instead of complex food webs and are typically measured as biomass averages, not as biomass variation. We study trophic cascades propagating across a complex food ... -
Increasing temperature and productivity change biomass, trophic pyramids and community‐level omega‐3 fatty acid content in subarctic lake food webs
Keva, Ossi; Taipale, Sami J.; Hayden, Brian; Thomas, Stephen M.; Vesterinen, Jussi; Kankaala, Paula; Kahilainen, Kimmo K. (Wiley-Blackwell, 2021)Climate change in the Arctic is outpacing the global average and land‐use is intensifying due to exploitation of previously inaccessible or unprofitable natural resources. A comprehensive understanding of how the joint ... -
Diet and trophic niche of the invasive signal crayfish in the first invaded Italian stream ecosystem
Ercoli, Fabio; Ghia, Daniela; Gruppuso, Laura; Fea, Gianluca; Bo, Tiziano; Ruokonen, Timo J. (Nature Publishing Group, 2021)The occurrence of the signal crayfish Pacifastacus leniusculus in the Valla Stream was the first established population of this invasive species recorded in an Italian stream ecosystem. We evaluated the seasonality of diet ...