The Network Structure of Food Webs

Abstract Descriptions of food-web relationships first appeared more than a century ago, and the quantitative analysis of the network structure of food webs dates back several decades. Recent improvements in food-web data collection and analysis methods, coupled with a resurgence of interdisciplinary research on the topology of many kinds of “real-world” networks, have resulted in renewed interest in food-web structure. This chapter reviews the history of the search for generalities in the structure of complex food webs, and discusses current and future research trends. Analysis of food-web structure has used empirical and modeling approaches, and has been inspired both by questions from ecology such as “What factors promote stability of complex ecosystems given internal dynamics and external perturbations?” and questions from network research such as “Do food webs display universal structure similar to other types of networks?” Recent research has suggested that once variable diversity and connectance are taken into account, there are universal coarse-grained characteristics of how trophic links and species defined according to trophic function are distributed within food webs. In addition, aspects of food-web network structure have been shown to strongly influence the robust functioning and dynamical persistence of ecosystems.