Keywords
modularity
Quasi-Sign Stability
freshwater ecosystem
marine ecosystem
terrestrial ecosystem
How to Cite
Abstract
Food webs describe the predator-prey interactions that occur in a given habitat. They are useful tools for analyzing complexity and stability, as well as the relationship between these properties, in natural ecosystems. In this work we studied stability, measured as connectance ($C=L/S^2$, where S is the number of species and L the number of interactions), and the complexity-stability relationship in more than 300 empirical food webs considering a wide range of complexity and a variety of ecosystems. For this we considered two indicators of stability, modularity and the 'Quasi-Sign Stability' index, which we evaluated generally, and particularly for freshwater, marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Our results show significant differences in the stability indicators analyzed according to the type of ecosystem. In addition, the complexity-stability relationship was different not only according to the stability indicator considered, but also the type of ecosystem. In this sense, we suggest that it is essential to consider the multidimensionality of stability when evaluating it specifically and in the context of the complexity-stability relationship in food webs, as well as the type of ecosystem.
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