Positional effects in ecosystems
Informations
- Funding country
Hungary- Acronym
- -
- URL
- -
- Start date
- 10/1/2002
- End date
- 9/30/2003
- Budget
- 19,395 EUR
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Postdoctoral Programme | Grant | 10/1/2002 | 9/30/2003 | 19,395 EUR |
Abstract
Structural and dynamical studies are both needed for understanding the functioning of ecosystems. These approaches rarely meet adequately in ecology. In the analysis of food webs describing interspecific interactions of highest importance, overemphasising either pure topology or population dynamics in no network context represents extreme views. But we believe that using reasonable structural indices and simulating the dynamics of logical situations still can help the understanding of this classical problem. We study and quantify the positions of (trophic) species having large effects on community dynamics in real webs. It is an interesting question whether it is possible to characterise structuraIly the dynamically mostly important species, i.e. whether there exists a network index referring clearly to the main dynamical properties. The identification of important species based on the aboves could help a lot in outlining quantitative approaches to keystone species, which is a key problem of conservation biology.