Back to Search Start Over

Detecting the Signature of Body Mass Evolution in the Broad-Scale Architecture of Food Webs.

Authors :
DeLong, John P.
Source :
American Naturalist. Oct2020, Vol. 196 Issue 4, p443-453. 11p.
Publication Year :
2020

Abstract

Body mass–based links between predator and prey are fundamental to the architecture of food webs. These links determine who eats whom across trophic levels and strongly influence the population abundance, flow of energy, and stability properties of natural communities. Body mass links scale up to create predator-prey mass relationships across species, but the origin of these relationships is unclear. Here I show that predator-prey mass relationships are consistent with the idea that body mass evolves to maximize a dependable supply of resource uptake. I used a global database of ~2,100 predator-prey links and a mechanistic optimization model to correctly predict the slope of the predator-prey mass scaling relationships across species generally and for nine taxonomic subsets. The model also predicted cross-group variation in the heights of the body mass relationships, providing an integrated explanation for mass relationships and their variation across taxa. The results suggest that natural selection on body mass at the local scale is detectable in ecological organization at the macro scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
00030147
Volume :
196
Issue :
4
Database :
Academic Search Index
Journal :
American Naturalist
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
146055554
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1086/710350