Dynamic
images 1-5 visualize a non-linear bioenergetic simulation of the
population dynamics that might happen in the Little Rock Lake food web.
The non-linear simulations are described in Williams and Martinez 2004,
with arbitrary parameters fixed at constants for all species. Changes
in node size represent changes in species biomass; changes in link size
represent changes in feeding rates between species.
Little Rock
Lake is a two-basin, mesotrophic lake in northern Wisconsin. The lake
is 18 ha, with a maximum depth of 10.3m and an average depth of 3.5m.
The food web consists of 93 trophic
species,
mostly pelagic and benthic species such as fishes, zooplankton,
macroinvertebrates, and algae.
For more information, see Martinez 1991.
The web structure is organized vertically, with node color representing
trophic level. Dark-grey nodes represent basal
species, such as plants and detritus, medium-grey nodes represent
intermediate
species, and white nodes represent top species or primary predators.
Links characterize the interaction between two nodes, and the width of
the link attenuates down the trophic cascade (i.e. a link is thicker at
the predator end and thinner at the prey end).
Reference publications:
Martinez, N.D. 1991. Artifacts or attributes? Effects of
resolution on the Little Rock Lake food web. Ecological
Monographs, vol. 61, no. 4, pp. 367-392.
Dunne, J.A., R.J. Williams, and N.D. Martinez. 2002. Network structure and biodiversity loss in
food webs: robustness increases with connectance. Ecology
Letters, vol. 5, pp. 558-567.
