Food Webs and Niche Space. (MPB-11), Volume 11

Joel E. Cohen; David W. Stephens

Published by Princeton University Press 1978

Food Webs and Niche Space. (MPB-11), Volume 11

Joel E. Cohen and David W. Stephens

Volume 11 in the series Monographs in Population Biology

https://doi.org/10.12987/9780691209449

Overview
Contents

About this book

What is the minimum dimension of a niche space necessary to represent the overlaps among observed niches? This book presents a new technique for obtaining a partial answer to this elementary question about niche space. The author bases his technique on a relation between the combinatorial structure of food webs and the mathematical theory of interval graphs.

Professor Cohen collects more than thirty food webs from the ecological literature and analyzes their statistical and combinatorial properties in detail. As a result, he is able to generalize: within habitats of a certain limited physical and temporal heterogeneity, the overlaps among niches, along their trophic (feeding) dimensions, can be represented in a one-dimensional niche space far more often than would be expected by chance alone and perhaps always. This compatibility has not previously been noticed. It indicates that real food webs fall in a small subset of the mathematically possible food webs.

Professor Cohen discusses other apparently new features of real food webs, including the constant ratio of the number of kinds of prey to the number of kinds of predators in food webs that describe a community. In conclusion he discusses possible extensions and limitations of his results and suggests directions for future research.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
List of Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
List of Figures Publicly Available Download PDF	xiii
CHAPTER ONE. Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER TWO. A Relation between Food Webs and Niche Space Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	6
CHAPTER THREE. Which Food Webs Are Interval? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	28
CHAPTER FOUR. Statistics of Food Webs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
CHAPTER FIVE. Frequencies of Interval Food Webs in Observed and Monte Carlo Samples Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
CHAPTER SIX. If Niche Space Is One-Dimensional Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	93
CHAPTER SEVEN. Extensions and Critique Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
CHAPTER EIGHT. Review of Open Problems Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	126
APPENDIX 1. Sample of Food Webs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	133
APPENDIX 2. The Mean and Variance of Niche Overlap According to Six Food Web Models Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	166
APPENDIX 3. Expected Niche Overlaps Assuming Randomly Overlapping One-Dimensional Niches Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	174
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185