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Nutrients can shape ecological interactions but remain poorly integrated into ecological networks. Concepts such as nutrient-specific foraging nevertheless have the potential to expose the mechanisms structuring complex ecological systems. Nutrients also present an opportunity to predict dynamic processes, such as interaction rewiring and extinction cascades, and increase the accuracy of network analyses. Here, we propose the concept of nutritional networks. By integrating nutritional data into ecological networks, we envisage significant advances to our understanding of ecological processes from individual to ecosystem scales. We show that networks can be constructed with nutritional data to illuminate how nutrients structure ecological interactions in natural systems through an empirical example. Throughout, we identify fundamental ecological hypotheses that can be explored in a nutritional network context, alongside methods for resolving those networks. Nutrients influence the structure and complexity of ecological networks through mechanistic processes and concepts including nutritional niche differentiation, functional responses, landscape diversity, ecological invasions and ecosystem robustness. Future research on ecological networks should consider nutrients when investigating the drivers of network structure and function., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.)

Research in freshwater ecosystems has always had a strong focus on ecological interactions. The vast majority of studies, however, have investigated trophic interactions and food webs, overlooking a wider suite of non-trophic interactions (e.g. facilitation, competition, symbiosis and parasitism) and the ecological networks they form. Without a complete understanding of all potential interactions, ranging from mutualistic through to antagonistic, we may be missing important ecological processes with consequences for ecosystem assembly, structure and function. Ecological networks can be constructed at different scales, from genes to ecosystems, but also local to global, and as such there is significant opportunity to put them to work in freshwater research. To expand beyond food webs, we need to leverage technological and methodological advances and look to recent research in marine and terrestrial systems-which are far more advanced in terms of detecting, measuring and contextualising ecological interactions. Future studies should look to emerging technologies to aid in merging the wide range of ecological interactions in freshwater ecosystems into networks to advance our understanding and ultimately increase the efficacy of conservation, management, restoration and other applications., (© 2023 The Author. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.)