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Towards the Integration of Niche and Network Theories.

  • Godoy O Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla (IRNAS-CSIC) Av. Reina Mercedes 10, E-41080 Sevilla, Spain. Electronic address: ogodoy@irnas.csic.es.
  • Bartomeus I Estación Bioĺogica de Doñana (EBD-CSIC) Calle Aḿerico Vespucio 26, E-41092 Sevillea, Spain.
  • Rohr RP Department of Biology - Ecology and Evolution, University of Fribourg Chemin du Muśee 10, CH-1700 Fribourg, Switzerland.
  • Saavedra S Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Av., 02139 Cambridge, MA, USA.
  • 2018-02-24
Published in:
  • Trends in ecology & evolution. - 2018
Coexistence
feasibility
multi-trophic networks
species interactions
stability
Biodiversity
Ecosystem
Models, Biological
English The quest for understanding how species interactions modulate diversity has progressed by theoretical and empirical advances following niche and network theories. Yet, niche studies have been limited to describe coexistence within tropic levels despite incorporating information about multi-trophic interactions. Network approaches could address this limitation, but they have ignored the structure of species interactions within trophic levels. Here we call for the integration of niche and network theories to reach new frontiers of knowledge exploring how interactions within and across trophic levels promote species coexistence. This integration is possible due to the strong parallelisms in the historical development, ecological concepts, and associated mathematical tools of both theories. We provide a guideline to integrate this framework with observational and experimental studies.
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  • English
Open access status
green
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https://sonar.ch/global/documents/2401
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