Unraveling Complexity: How Simple Rules Shape Aquatic Food Webs

Aquatic food webs—networks of predator–prey interactions that sustain life in oceans, lakes, and rivers—are among the most intricate systems in ecology. Traditional models have long relied on the “allometric rule,” which assumes that larger predators prefer larger prey [2,3]. However, this assumption fails to capture the true diversity of feeding strategies observed in nature. A recent study by García-Oliva and Wirtz [4] challenges this paradigm by demonstrating that much of the apparent complexity in aquatic food webs can be explained by a few simple assembly rules based on prey specialization.