IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v398y1999i6725d10.1038_18672.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Strong effects of weak interactions in ecological communities

Author

Listed:
  • E. L. Berlow

    (University of California)

Abstract

The loss or removal of individual species can cause dramatic changes in communities1,2,3,4,5. Experiments indicate that in many communities only a few species will have such strong effects, whereas most will have weak effects owing to small per capita effects and/or low abundance3,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16. But extinction of these ‘weak’ interactors could significantly alter natural communities because they play important stabilizing or ‘noise-dampening’ roles14,15,17,18,19,20,21,22,23. I demonstrate here that some ‘weak’ interactors may also be important by magnifying spatiotemporal variation in community structure. An analysis of published interaction strength data shows that the greatest variation in species effect occurred for the weakest interactions. A field experiment corroborates this and shows how indirect interactions can generate an inverse relationship between the mean and variance of a consumer's impact on its prey. When a species' effects are highly variable in sign and magnitude, they may average to seem weak over broad scales but be strong in local contexts. Thus, what is frequently considered to be ‘noise’ in species interaction data may be a critical part of the signal.

Suggested Citation

  • E. L. Berlow, 1999. "Strong effects of weak interactions in ecological communities," Nature, Nature, vol. 398(6725), pages 330-334, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:398:y:1999:i:6725:d:10.1038_18672
    DOI: 10.1038/18672
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/18672
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/18672?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhang, Zhibin & Yan, Chuan & Krebs, Charles J. & Stenseth, Nils Chr., 2015. "Ecological non-monotonicity and its effects on complexity and stability of populations, communities and ecosystems," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 312(C), pages 374-384.
    2. J Timothy Wootton & James D Forester, 2013. "Complex Population Dynamics in Mussels Arising from Density-Linked Stochasticity," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(9), pages 1-12, September.
    3. Miller, Jennifer & Franklin, Janet & Aspinall, Richard, 2007. "Incorporating spatial dependence in predictive vegetation models," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 202(3), pages 225-242.
    4. Fabio Pranovi & Gianluca Sarà & Piero Franzoi, 2013. "Valuing the Unmarketable: An Ecological Approach to the Externalities Estimate in Fishing Activities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(2), pages 1-11, February.
    5. Moniz, L.J. & Cooch, E.G. & Ellner, S.P. & Nichols, J.D. & Nichols, J.M., 2007. "Application of information theory methods to food web reconstruction," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 208(2), pages 145-158.
    6. Takayuki Niizato & Kotaro Sakamoto & Yoh-ichi Mototake & Hisashi Murakami & Takenori Tomaru & Tomotaro Hoshika & Toshiki Fukushima, 2020. "Finding continuity and discontinuity in fish schools via integrated information theory," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(2), pages 1-29, February.
    7. Dai, Lingfei & Dai, Meifeng & Huang, Yu & Li, Yin & Shen, Junjie & Chi, Huijia & Su, Weiyi, 2020. "Searching efficiency of multiple walkers on the weighted networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 541(C).
    8. Raymond, Ben & Hosie, Graham, 2009. "Network-based exploration and visualisation of ecological data," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(5), pages 673-683.
    9. Giacomini, Henrique Corrêa & De Marco, Paulo & Petrere, Miguel, 2009. "Exploring community assembly through an individual-based model for trophic interactions," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 220(1), pages 23-39.
    10. Sheng, Long & Li, Chunguang, 2009. "English and Chinese languages as weighted complex networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 388(12), pages 2561-2570.
    11. Ortiz, Marco & Campos, Leonardo & Berrios, Fernando & Rodriguez, Fabián & Hermosillo, Brenda & González, Jorge, 2013. "Network properties and keystoneness assessment in different intertidal communities dominated by two ecosystem engineer species (SE Pacific coast): A comparative analysis," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 250(C), pages 307-318.
    12. Jennifer M Fraterrigo & Aaron B Langille & James A Rusak, 2020. "Stochastic disturbance regimes alter patterns of ecosystem variability and recovery," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(3), pages 1-20, March.
    13. Wang, Shuran Cindy & Liu, Xueqin & Liu, Yong & Wang, Hongzhu, 2020. "Benthic-pelagic coupling in lake energetic food webs," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 417(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:398:y:1999:i:6725:d:10.1038_18672. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.