Abstract
The strength of trophic (feeding) links between two species depends on the traits of both the consumer and the resource. But which traits of consumer and resource have to be measured to predict link strengths, and how many? A novel theoretical framework for systematically determining trophic traits from empirical data was recently proposed. Here we demonstrate this approach for a group of 14 consumer fish species (Labeobarbus spp., Cyprinidae) and 11 aquatic resource categories coexisting in Lake Tana in northern Ethiopia, analysing large sets of phenotypic consumer and resource traits with known roles in feeding ecology. We systematically reconstruct structure and geometry of trophic niche space, in which link strengths are predicted by the distances between consumers and resources. These distances are then represented graphically resulting in an image of trophic niche space and its occupancy. We find trophic niche to be multidimensional. Among the models we analysed, one with two resource and two consumer traits had the highest predictive power for link strength. Results further suggest that trophic niche space has a pseudo-Euclidean geometry, meaning that link strength decays with distance in some dimensions of trophic niche space, while it increases with distance in other dimensions. Our analysis not only informs theory and modelling but may also be helpful for predicting trophic link strengths for pairs of other, similar species.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Albrecht GH, Gelvin BR, Hartman SE (1993) Ratios as a size adjustment in morphometrics. Am J Phys Anthropol 91(4):441–468. doi:10.1002/ajpa.1330910404
Allesina S (2011) Predicting trophic relations in ecological networks: a test of the Allometric Diet Breadth Model. J Theor Biol 279(1):161–168. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.06.040
Allesina S, Alonso D, Pascual M (2008) A general model for food web structure. Science 320(5876):658–661. doi:10.1126/science.1156269
Arditi R, Michalski J, Hirzel AH (2005) Rheagogies: modelling non-trophic effects in food webs. Ecol Complex 2(3):249–258. doi:10.1016/j.ecocom.2005.04.003
Barnett A, Bellwood DR, Hoey AS (2006) Trophic ecomorphology of cardinalfish. Mar Ecol Prog Ser 322:249–257. doi:10.3354/meps322249
Berlow EL, Dunne JA, Martinez ND, Stark PB, Williams RJ, Brose U (2009) Simple prediction of interaction strengths in complex food webs. Proc Natl Acad Sci 106(1):187–191. doi:10.1073/pnas.0806823106
Bersier L-F (2007) A history of the study of ecological networks. In: Képès F (ed) Biological networks. World Scientific, New Jersey, pp 365–421. doi:10.1016/j.ecocom.2007.06.013
Bhat A (2005) Ecomorphological correlates in tropical stream fishes of southern India. Environ Biol Fish 73(2):211–225. doi:10.1007/s10641-005-0561-0
Carlson RL, Wainwright PC (2010) The ecological morphology of darter fishes (Percidae: Etheostomatinae). Biol J Linn Soc 100(1):30–45. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2010.01417.x
Cohen JE (1977) Food webs and the dimensionality of trophic niche space. Proc Natl Acad Sci 74(10):4533–4536
de Graaf M, Megens H-J, Samallo J, Sibbing F (2010) Preliminary insight into the age and origin of the Labeobarbus fish species flock from Lake Tana (Ethiopia) using the mtDNA cytochrome b gene. Mol Phylogenet Evol 54(2):336–343. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2009.10.029
de Ruiter PC, Neutel A-M, Moore JC (1995) Energetics, patterns of interaction strengths and stability in real ecosystems. Science 269:1257–1260. doi:10.1126/science.269.5228.1257
Dejen E, Vijverberg J, de Graaf M, Sibbing FA (2006) Predicting and testing resource partitioning in a tropical fish assemblage of zooplanktivorous ‘barbs’: an ecomorphological approach. J Fish Biol 69(5):1356–1378. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8649.2006.01197.x
Development Core Team R (2010) R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna
Eklöf A, Jacob U, Kopp J, Bosch J, Castro-Urgal R, Chacoff NP, Dalsgaard B, de Sassi C, Galetti M, Guimarães PR, Lomáscolo SB, Martín González AM, Pizo MA, Rader R, Rodrigo A, Tylianakis JM, Vázquez DP, Allesina S (2013) The dimensionality of ecological networks. Ecol Lett 16(5):577–583. doi:10.1111/ele.12081
Emmerson MC, Montoya JM, Woodward G (2005) Body size, interaction strength, and food web dynamics. In: de Ruiter PC, Wolters V, Moore JC (eds) Dynamics food webs, multiple species assemblage, ecosystem development and environmental change. Academic Press, New York, pp 167–178
Fath BD, Scharler UM, Ulanowicz RE, Hannon B (2007) Ecological network analysis: network construction. Ecol Model 208(1):49–55. doi:10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2007.04.029
French A (1968) Special relativity. W.W. Norton & Company, New York
Klecka J, Boukal DS (2013) Foraging and vulnerability traits modify predator–prey body mass allometry: freshwater macroinvertebrates as a case study. J Anim Ecol 82(5):1031–1041. doi:10.1111/1365-2656.12078
Kotrschal K, Brandstätter R, Gomahr A, Junger H, Palzenberger M, Zaunreiter M (1991) Brain and sensory systems. In: Winfield IJ, Nelson JS (eds) Cyprinid fishes: systematics, biology and exploitation. Chapman and Hall, London, pp 284–331
Layman CA, Langerhans RB, Winemiller KO (2005) Body size, not other morphological traits, characterizes cascading effects in fish assemblage composition following commercial netting. Can J Fish Aquat Sci 62(12):2802–2810. doi:10.1139/F05-183
Link JS (2004) A general model of selectivity for fish feeding: a rank proportion algorithm (Transactions of the American Fisheries Society). Trans Am Fish Soc 133(3):655–673. doi:10.1577/t02-142.1
MacArthur R, Levins R (1967) The limiting similarity, convergence, and divergence of coexisting species. Am Nat 101(921):377–385
May RM, MacArthur RH (1972) Niche overlap as a function of environmental variability. Proc Natl Acad Sci 69(5):1109–1113
Nagelkerke LAJ, Sibbing FA (2000) The large barbs (Barbus spp., Cyprinidae, teleostei) of Lake Tana (Ethiopia), with a description of a new species, Barbus osseensis. Neth J Zool 50(2):179–214. doi:10.1163/156854200505946
Nagelkerke LAJ, Sibbing FA, van den Boogaart JGM, Lammens EHRR, Osse JWM (1994) The barbs (Barbus spp.) of Lake Tana: a forgotten species flock? Environ Biol Fish 39(1):1–22. doi:10.1007/BF00004751
Naisbit RE, Rohr RP, Rossberg AG, Kehrli P, Bersier L-F (2012) Phylogeny versus body size as determinants of food web structure. Proc R Soc B Biol Sci. doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.0327
Petchey OL, Beckerman AP, Riede JO, Warren PH (2008) Size, foraging, and food web structure. Proc Natl Acad Sci 105(11):4191–4196. doi:10.1073/pnas.0710672105
Piegorsch WW, Bailer AJ (2005) Analyzing environmental data. Wiley, Chichester
Pouilly M, Lino F, Bretenoux JG, Rosales C (2003) Dietary–morphological relationships in a fish assemblage of the Bolivian Amazonian floodplain. J Fish Biol 62(5):1137–1158. doi:10.1046/j.1095-8649.2003.00108.x
Quinn GP, Keough MJ (2002) Experimental design and data analysis for biologists. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Reunanen J (2003) Overfitting in making comparisons between variable selection methods. J Mach Learn Res 3:1371–1382
Rohr RP, Scherer H, Kehrli P, Mazza C, Bersier L-F (2010) Modeling food webs: exploring unexplained structure using latent traits. Am Nat 176(2):170–177. doi:10.1086/653667
Rossberg AG (2013) Food webs and biodiversity: foundations, models, data, 1st edn. Wiley, Chichester. doi:10.1002/9781118502181
Rossberg AG, Matsuda H, Amemiya T, Itoh K (2006) Food webs: experts consuming families of experts. J Theor Biol 241(3):552–563. doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2005.12.021
Rossberg AG, Ishii R, Amemiya T, Itoh K (2008) The top-down mechanism for body-mass—abundance scaling (Ecology). Ecology 89(2):567–580. doi:10.1890/07-0124.1
Rossberg AG, Brännström Å, Dieckmann U (2010a) Food-web structure in low- and high-dimensional trophic niche spaces. J R Soc Interface. doi:10.1098/rsif.2010.0111
Rossberg AG, Brännström Å, Dieckmann U (2010b) How trophic interaction strength depends on traits. Theor Ecol 3(1):13–24. doi:10.1007/s12080-009-0049-1
Rossberg AG, Farnsworth KD, Satoh K, Pinnegar JK (2011) Universal power-law diet partitioning by marine fish and squid with surprising stability–diversity implications. Proc R Soc B Biol Sci 278(1712):1617–1625. doi:10.1098/rspb.2010.1483
Russo T, Pulcini D, O'Leary Á, Cataudella S, Mariani S (2008) Relationship between body shape and trophic niche segregation in two closely related sympatric fishes. J Fish Biol 73(4):809–828. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8649.2008.01964.x
Schmitz OJ, Price JR (2011) Convergence of trophic interaction strengths in grassland food webs through metabolic scaling of herbivore biomass. J Anim Ecol 80(6):1330–1336. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01882.x
Sibbing FA (1991a) Food capture and oral processing. In: Winfield IJ, Nelson JS (eds) Cyprinid fishes: systematics, biology and exploitation, vol. 3. Fish and Fisheries Series. Chapman & Hall, London, pp 377–412
Sibbing FA (1991b) Food processing by mastication in cyprinid fish. In: Vincent JFV, Lillford PJ (eds) Feeding and the texture of food, vol. 44. SEB Seminar Series. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 57–92. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511600555.005
Sibbing FA, Nagelkerke LAJ (2001) Resource partitioning by Lake Tana barbs predicted from fish morphometrics and prey characteristics. Rev Fish Biol Fish 10(4):393–437. doi:10.1023/A:1012270422092
Sibbing FA, Nagelkerke LAJ, Osse JWM (1994) Ecomorphology as a tool in fisheries—identification and ecotyping of Lake Tana Barbs (Barbus-Intermedius Complex), Ethiopia. Neth J Agric Sci 42(1):77–85
Sokolov DD (2002) Pseudo-Euclidean space. In: Hazewinkel M (ed) Encyclopaedia of mathematics. Kluwer, Dordrecht
Spooner D, Vaughn C (2008) A trait-based approach to species’ roles in stream ecosystems: climate change, community structure, and material cycling. Oecologia 158(2):307–317. doi:10.1007/s00442-008-1132-9
Stouffer DB, Rezende EL, Amaral LAN (2011) The role of body mass in diet contiguity and food-web structure. J Anim Ecol 80(3):632–639. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2656.2011.01812.x
Vucic-Pestic O, Rall BC, Kalinkat G, Brose U (2010) Allometric functional response model: body masses constrain interaction strengths. J Anim Ecol 79(1):249–256. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2656.2009.01622.x
Wainwright PC, Richard BA (1995) Predicting patterns of prey use from morphology of fishes. Environ Biol Fish 44:97–113. doi:10.1007/BF00005909
Williams R, Purves D (2011) The probabilistic niche model reveals substantial variation in the niche structure of empirical food webs (Ecology). Ecology 92:1849–1857. doi:10.1890/11-0200.1
Woodward G, Hildrew AG (2002) Body-size determinants of niche overlap and intraguild predation within a complex food web. J Anim Ecol 71(6):1063–1074. doi:10.1046/j.1365-2656.2002.00669.x
Yoshida K (2003) Dynamics of evolutionary patterns of clades in a food web system model. Ecol Res 18:625–637. doi:10.1111/j.1440-1703.2003.00585.x
Acknowledgments
A.G.R. was supported by the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (M1228), the European Commission (agreement no. 308392, DEVOTES) and a Beaufort Marine Research Award carried out under the Irish Sea Change Strategy and the Strategy for Science Technology and Innovation (2006–2013).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Online Resource 1
(PDF 218 kb)
Online Resource 2
(PDF 228 kb)
Online Resource 3
(PDF 93.8 kb)
Online Resource 4
(ZIP 13 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nagelkerke, L.A.J., Rossberg, A.G. Trophic niche-space imaging, using resource and consumer traits. Theor Ecol 7, 423–434 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12080-014-0229-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12080-014-0229-5