Published May 17, 2019 | Version v1
Dataset Open

Data from: Horizontal and vertical diversity jointly shape food web stability against small and large perturbations

  • 1. Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group Wageningen University P.O. Box 476700 AAWageningen The Netherlands*
  • 2. University of Namur
  • 3. Resource Ecology Group Wageningen University Droevendaalsesteeg 3a6708 PBWageningen The Netherlands*
  • 4. Nanjing University
  • 5. Peking University

Description

The biodiversity of food webs is composed of horizontal (i.e. within trophic levels) and vertical diversity (i.e. the number of trophic levels). Understanding their joint effect on stability is a key challenge. Theory mostly considers their individual effects and focuses on small perturbations near equilibrium in hypothetical food webs. Here, we study the joint effects of horizontal and vertical diversity on the stability of hypothetical (modelled) and empirical food webs. In modelled food webs, horizontal and vertical diversity increased and decreased stability, respectively, with a stronger positive effect of producer diversity on stability at higher consumer diversity. Experiments with an empirical plankton food-web, where we manipulated horizontal and vertical diversity and measured stability from species interactions and from resilience against large perturbations, confirmed these predictions. Taken together, our findings highlight the need to conserve horizontal biodiversity at different trophic levels to ensure stability.

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Additional details

Related works

Is cited by
10.1111/ele.13282 (DOI)