Data from: Exposing the structure of an Arctic food web

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dc.contributor.affiliationUniversity of Turku - Vesterinen, Eero J.
dc.contributor.affiliationUniversity of Helsinki - Wirta, Helena K.
dc.contributor.affiliationStockholm University - Hambäck, Peter A.
dc.contributor.affiliationStockholm University - Weingartner, Elisabeth
dc.contributor.affiliationAarhus University - Rasmussen, Claus
dc.contributor.affiliationUniversity of Groningen - Reneerkens, Jeroen
dc.contributor.affiliationAarhus University - Schmidt, Niels M.
dc.contributor.affiliationUniversity of Helsinki - Gilg, Olivier
dc.contributor.affiliationUniversity of Helsinki - Roslin, Tomas
dc.contributor.authorVesterinen, Eero J.
dc.contributor.authorWirta, Helena K.
dc.contributor.authorHambäck, Peter A.
dc.contributor.authorWeingartner, Elisabeth
dc.contributor.authorRasmussen, Claus
dc.contributor.authorReneerkens, Jeroen
dc.contributor.authorSchmidt, Niels M.
dc.contributor.authorGilg, Olivier
dc.contributor.authorRoslin, Tomas
dc.coverage.spatialNortheast Greenland National Park
dc.coverage.spatialZackenberg Valley
dc.coverage.spatialGreenland
dc.date.accessioned2025-03-24T15:15:00Z
dc.date.issued2016-08-12
dc.date.issued2016-08-12
dc.descriptionHow food webs are structured has major implications for their stability and dynamics. While poorly studied to date, arctic food webs are commonly assumed to be simple in structure, with few links per species. If this is the case, then different parts of the web may be weakly connected to each other, with populations and species united by only a low number of links. We provide the first highly resolved description of trophic link structure for a large part of a high-arctic food web. For this purpose, we apply a combination of recent techniques to describing the links between three predator guilds (insectivorous birds, spiders, and lepidopteran parasitoids) and their two dominant prey orders (Diptera and Lepidoptera). The resultant web shows a dense link structure and no compartmentalization or modularity across the three predator guilds. Thus, both individual predators and predator guilds tap heavily into the prey community of each other, offering versatile scope for indirect interactions across different parts of the web. The current description of a first but single arctic web may serve as a benchmark toward which to gauge future webs resolved by similar techniques. Targeting an unusual breadth of predator guilds, and relying on techniques with a high resolution, it suggests that species in this web are closely connected. Thus, our findings call for similar explorations of link structure across multiple guilds in both arctic and other webs. From an applied perspective, our description of an arctic web suggests new avenues for understanding how arctic food webs are built and function and of how they respond to current climate change. It suggests that to comprehend the community-level consequences of rapid arctic warming, we should turn from analyses of populations, population pairs, and isolated predator–prey interactions to considering the full set of interacting species.
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cv8cr
dc.identifier.urihttps://hydatakatalogi-test-24.it.helsinki.fi/handle/123456789/9469
dc.rightsOpen
dc.rights.licensecc-zero
dc.subjectXysticus deichmanni
dc.subjectXysticus labradorensis
dc.subjectEulophidae
dc.subjectCalidris alba
dc.subjectPlectrophenax nivalis
dc.subjectErigone arctica
dc.subjectmolecular diet analysis
dc.subjectgeneralism
dc.subjectspecialism
dc.subjectEmblyna borealis
dc.subjectCalidris alpina
dc.subjectTachinidae
dc.subjectIchneumonidae
dc.subjectBraconidae
dc.subjectHolocene
dc.subjectPardosa glacialis
dc.titleData from: Exposing the structure of an Arctic food web
dc.typedataset
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