RT Journal Article
T1 Food web topology in high mountain lakes
A1 Sánchez Hernández, Javier
A1 Cobo Gradín, Fernando
A1 Amundsen, Per‐Arne
AB Although diversity and limnology of alpine lake systems are well studied, their food web structure and properties have rarely been addressed. Here, the topological food webs of three high mountain lakes in Central Spain were examined. We first addressed the pelagic networks of the lakes, and then we explored how food web topology changed when benthic biota was included to establish complete trophic networks. We conducted a literature search to compare our alpine lacustrine food webs and their structural metrics with those of 18 published lentic webs using a meta-analytic approach. The comparison revealed that the food webs in alpine lakes are relatively simple, in terms of structural network properties (linkage density and connectance), in comparison with lowland lakes, but no great differences were found among pelagic networks. The studied high mountain food webs were dominated by a high proportion of omnivores and species at intermediate trophic levels. Omnivores can exploit resources at multiple trophic levels, and this characteristic might reduce competition among interacting species. Accordingly, the trophic overlap, measured as trophic similarity, was very low in all three systems. Thus, these alpine networks are characterized by many omnivorous consumers with numerous prey species and few consumers with a single or few prey and with low competitive interactions among species. The present study emphasizes the ecological significance of omnivores in high mountain lakes as promoters of network stability and as central players in energy flow pathways via food partitioning and enabling energy mobility among trophic levels.
PB PLOS
YR 2015
FD 2015
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10347/22387
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10347/22387
LA eng
NO Sánchez-Hernández J, Cobo F, Amundsen P-A (2015) Food Web Topology in High Mountain Lakes. PLoS ONE 10(11): e0143016. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0143016
NO Sánchez-Hernández was supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Galician Plan for Research, Innovation, and Growth 2011-2015 (Plan I2C, Xunta de Galicia). The work is also supported as a spin-off from a project financed by University of Tromsø and the Norwegian research council (NFR 213610/F20)
DS Minerva
RD 28 abr 2026