Parasites in kelp‐forest food webs increase food‐chain length, complexity, and specialization, but reduce connectance
Advanced Search
Select up to three search categories and corresponding keywords using the fields to the right. Refer to the Help section for more detailed instructions.

Search our Collections & Repository

For very narrow results

When looking for a specific result

Best used for discovery & interchangable words

Recommended to be used in conjunction with other fields

Dates

to

Document Data
Library
People
Clear All
Clear All

For additional assistance using the Custom Query please check out our Help Page

i

Parasites in kelp‐forest food webs increase food‐chain length, complexity, and specialization, but reduce connectance

Filetype[PDF-2.05 MB]


Details Supporting Files You May Also Like

Details:

  • Journal Title:
    Ecological Monographs
  • Personal Author:
  • NOAA Program & Office:
    NOAA General Documents
  • Description:
    We explored whether parasites are important in kelp forests by examining their effects on a high‐quality, high‐resolution kelp‐forest food web. After controlling for generic effects of network size, parasites affected kelp‐forest food web structure in some ways consistent with other systems. Parasites increased the trophic span of the web, increasing top predator vulnerability and the longest chain length. Unique links associated with parasites, such as concomitant predation (consumption of parasites along with their hosts by predators) increased the frequency of network motifs involving mutual consumption and decreased niche contiguity of free‐living species. However, parasites also affected kelp‐forest food web structure in ways not seen in other systems. Kelp‐forest parasites are richer and more specialized than other systems. As a result, parasites reduced diet generality and decreased connectance in the kelp forest. Although mutual consumption motifs increased in frequency, this motif type was still a small fraction of all possible motifs, so their increase in frequency was not enough to compensate for the decrease in connectance caused by adding many specialist parasite species.
  • Keywords:
  • Source:
    Ecological Monographs, 92(2)
  • DOI:
  • ISSN:
    0012-9615;1557-7015;
  • Format:
    PDF
  • Publisher:
    Wiley
  • Document Type:
    Journal Article
  • License:
  • Rights Information:
    CC BY
  • Compliance:
    Library
  • Main Document Checksum:
  • Download URL:
  • File Type:

You May Also Like

Checkout today's featured content at staging-noaa.cdc.gov

Version 3.27.1