2004/01/19 by Barbara Drossel, Alan McKane, Alan J. McKane +4
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Biological sciences #FOS: Physical sciences #Genetic diversity and population structure #Isotope Analysis in Ecology #Plant and animal studies #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.stat-mech #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.q-bio/0401025
16 pages, 7 figures
arxiv created 2004/01/19 · openalex publication_date 2004/01/19 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the long-term web structure emerging in evolutionary food web models when different types of functional responses are used. We find that large and complex webs with several trophic layers arise only if the population dynamics is such that it allows predators to focus on their best prey species. This can be achieved using modified Lotka-Volterra or Holling/Beddington functional responses with effective couplings that depend on the predator's efficiency at exploiting the prey, or a ratio-dependent functional response with adaptive foraging. In contrast, if standard Lotka-Volterra or Holling/Beddington functional responses are used, long-term evolution generates webs with almost all species being basal, and with additionally many links between these species. Interestingly, in all cases studied, a large proportion of weak links result naturally from the evolution of the food webs.