Food webs and biodiversity
Food Webs and Biodiversity: Foundations, Models, Data -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Symbols -- Part I: Preliminaries -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Models and Theories -- 2.1 The usefulness of models -- 2.2 What models should model -- 2.3 The possibility of ecological theory -- 2.4 Theory-driven ecological research -- 3 Some Basic Concepts -- 3.1 Basic concepts of food-web studies -- 3.2 Physical quantities and dimensions -- Part II: Elements of Food-Web Models -- 4 Energy and Biomass Budgets -- 4.1 Currencies of accounting -- 4.2 Rates and efficiencies -- 4.3 Energy budgets in food webs -- 5 Allometric Scaling Relationships Between Body Size and Physiological Rates -- 5.1 Scales and scaling -- 5.2 Allometric scaling -- 6 Population Dynamics -- 6.1 Basic considerations -- 6.1.1 Exponential population growth -- 6.1.2 Five complications -- 6.1.3 Environmental variability -- 6.2 Structured populations and density-dependence -- 6.2.1 The dilemma between species and stages -- 6.2.2 Explicitly stage-structured population dynamics -- 6.2.3 Communities of structured populations -- 6.3 The Quasi-Neutral Approximation -- 6.3.1 The emergence of food webs -- 6.3.2 Rana catesbeiana and its resources -- 6.3.3 Numerical test of the approximation -- 6.4 Reproductive value -- 6.4.1 The concept of reproductive value -- 6.4.2 The role of reproductive value in the QNA -- 6.4.3 Body mass as a proxy for reproductive value -- 7 From Trophic Interactions to Trophic Link Strengths -- 7.1 Functional and numerical responses -- 7.2 Three models for functional responses -- 7.2.1 Linear response -- 7.2.2 Type II response -- 7.2.3 Type II response with prey switching -- 7.2.4 Strengths and weaknesses of these models -- 7.3 Food webs as networks of trophic link strengths -- 7.3.1 The ontology of trophic link strengths -- 7.3.2 Variability of trophic link strengths.