Complex Food Webs Prevent Competitive Exclusion Amongst Producer Species

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Also Included In: Veterinary
Article Date: 23 Jul 2008 - 2:00 PDT

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Competitive exclusion prevents coexistence of producer species, which eventually limits the biodiversity of natural ecosystems.

For the first time, analyses of complex food-web models show that herbivory predominantly reduces the biomass of dominant producers without assuming a trade-off between the producers' nutrient-intake efficiency and their resistance to herbivory. Instead, a strong negative feedback loop emerges in food webs: factors that increase producer biomasses also increase herbivory, which reduces producer biomasses.

This negative feedback loop regulates the co-existence and biomass patterns of the producers by balancing biomass increases of producers and biomass fluxes to herbivores, which prevents competitive exclusion.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

www.publishing.royalsociety.org/proceedingsb