Journal ArticleDOI
Global patterns in predator–prey size relationships reveal size dependency of trophic transfer efficiency
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The results suggest that very general rules determine dominant trends in PPMR in diverse marine ecosystems, leading to the ubiquity of size-based trophic structuring and the consistency of observed relationships between the relative abundance of individuals and their body size.Abstract:
Predator-prey body size relationships influence food chain length, trophic structure, transfer efficiency, interaction strength, and the bioaccumulation of contaminants. Improved quantification of these relationships and their response to the environment is needed to parameterize food web models and describe food web structure and function. A compiled data set comprising 29582 records of individual prey eaten at 21 locations by individual predators that spanned 10 orders of magnitude in mass and lived in marine environments ranging from the poles to the tropics was used to investigate the influence of predator size and environment on predator and prey size relationships. Linear mixed effects models demonstrated that predator-prey mass ratios (PPMR) increased with predator mass. The amount of the increase varied among locations and predator species and individuals but was not significantly influenced by temperature, latitude, depth, or primary production. Increases in PPMR with predator mass implied nonlinear relationships between log body mass and trophic level and reductions in transfer efficiency with increasing body size. The results suggest that very general rules determine dominant trends in PPMR in diverse marine ecosystems, leading to the ubiquity of size-based trophic structuring and the consistency of observed relationships between the relative abundance of individuals and their body size.read more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Shrinking of fishes exacerbates impacts of global ocean changes on marine ecosystems
William W. L. Cheung,Jorge L. Sarmiento,John P. Dunne,Thomas L. Frölicher,Vicky W. Y. Lam,M.L. Deng Palomares,Reg Watson,Daniel Pauly +7 more
TL;DR: A modelling study into the integrated effects of these various changes on fish body size suggests that averaged maximum body weight could fall by 14–24% globally by 2050.
Journal ArticleDOI
Potential consequences of climate change for primary production and fish production in large marine ecosystems
Julia L. Blanchard,Julia L. Blanchard,Simon Jennings,Simon Jennings,Robert Holmes,James Harle,Gorka Merino,J. Icarus Allen,Jason Holt,Nicholas K. Dulvy,Manuel Barange +10 more
TL;DR: This work couple a physical–biogeochemical model with a dynamic, size-based food web model to predict the future effects of climate change on fish biomass and production in 11 large regional shelf seas, with and without fishing effects.
Journal ArticleDOI
Ecosystem ecology: size-based constraints on the pyramids of life
TL;DR: It is shown that bottom-heavy pyramids should predominate in the real world, whereas top-heavyPyramids indicate overestimation of predator abundance or energy subsidies, and provides a powerful framework both for understanding baseline expectations of community structure and for evaluating future scenarios under climate change and exploitation.
Journal ArticleDOI
Food web framework for size-structured populations.
TL;DR: The framework allows food web models to include ontogenetic growth and life-history omnivory at the individual level by resolving the population structure of each species as a size-spectrum by synthesising traditional unstructured food webs, allometric body size scaling, trait-based modelling, and physiologically structured modelling.
Journal ArticleDOI
Shoaling develops with age in Zebrafish (Danio rerio).
Christine Buske,Robert Gerlai +1 more
TL;DR: It is argued that the behavioral results of this work open a new avenue towards the understanding of the development of vertebrate social behavior and of its mechanisms and abnormalities.
References
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TL;DR: Linear Mixed-Effects and Nonlinear Mixed-effects (NLME) models have been studied in the literature as mentioned in this paper, where the structure of grouped data has been used for fitting LME models.
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Toward a metabolic theory of ecology
James H. Brown,James H. Brown,James F. Gillooly,Andrew P. Allen,Van M. Savage,Van M. Savage,Geoffrey B. West,Geoffrey B. West +7 more
TL;DR: This work has developed a quantitative theory for how metabolic rate varies with body size and temperature, and predicts how metabolic theory predicts how this rate controls ecological processes at all levels of organization from individuals to the biosphere.
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An estimate of global primary production in the ocean from satellite radiometer data
TL;DR: In this paper, an estimate of global net primary production in the ocean has been computed from the monthly mean near-surface chlorophyll fields for 1979-1986 obtained by the Nimbus 7 CZCS radiometer.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Size Distribution of Particles in the OCEAN1
TL;DR: In this paper, the frequency distributions of particIe size between sizes of about I and 100 p are given for both surface and deep water of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Journal ArticleDOI
Body size in ecological networks
Guy Woodward,Bo Ebenman,Mark C. Emmerson,José M. Montoya,José M. Montoya,Jens M. Olesen,Alfredo Valido,Philip H. Warren +7 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors propose a new framework to describe the structure and functioning of ecological networks and to assess the probable consequences of biodiversity change, by incorporating body size into theoretical models that explore food web stability and the patterning of energy fluxes.