Many of the earth’s ecosystems are experiencing large species losses due to human impacts such as habitat destruction and fragmentation, climate change, species invasions, pollution, and overfishing. Due to the complex interactions between species in food webs the extinction of one species could lead to a cascade of further extinctions and hence cause dramatic changes in species composition and ecosystem processes. The complexity of ecological systems makes it difficult to study them empirically. The systems often consist of large species numbers with lots of interactions between species. Investigating ecological communities within a theoretical approach, using mathematical models and computer simulations, is an alternative or a complement to experimental studies. This thesis is a collection of theoretical studies…
Contents
Introduction
The structure of food webs
Redundancy
Species types
Interactions
Theoretical analysis
Construction of food webs
Static or dynamic approach in detecting species extinctions
Dynamic models
Criteria for persistence
Local and global stability
Resilience
Permanence
Resistance
Time lags and extinction debts
Stochasticity
Complexity and stability
Summary and future work
Acknowledgments
References
PAPER I
PAPER II
PAPER III
PAPER IV
Author: Borrvall, Charlotte
Source: Linkoping University
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