From small to large to ecological networks in a dynamic world. In Ecological networks: linking structure to dynamics in food webs

Food webs are one of the most useful, and challenging, objects of study in ecology. These networks of predator-prey interactions, conjured in Darwin’s image of a “tangled bank, ” provide a paradigmatic example of complex adaptive systems. While it is deceptively easy to throw together simplified caricatures of feeding relationships among a few taxa as can be seen in many basic ecology text books, it is much harder to create detailed descriptions that portray a full range of diversity of species in an ecosystem and the complexity of interactions among them (fig. 1). Difficult to sample, difficult to describe, and difficult to model, food webs are nevertheless of central practical and theoretical importance. The interactions between species on different trophic (feeding) levels underlie the flow of energy and biomass in ecosystems and mediate species ’ responses to natural and unnatural perturbations such as habitat loss. Understanding the ecology and mathematics of food webs, and more broadly, ecological networks, is central to understanding the fate of biodiversity and ecosystems in response to perturbations