Title: Spatially structured food webs in coloured environments Authors: Sara Gudmundson, Frida Lögdberg, Uno Wennergren Affiliation: IFM, Theory and Modelling, Linköpings Universitet, Linköping, Sweden Email addresses: sargu@ifm.liu.se, friwa@ifm.liu.se, unwen@ifm.liu.se Running title (< 45 characters including spaces): Spatially structured food webs Keywords (< 10): Asynchrony, coloured environmental variation, dispersal, extinction risk, food web, spatial structure, stability, subpopulation, synchrony. Type of article: Letter No. words in the abstract: 135 No. words in the text body: 4113 No. words in the manuscript as a whole: 5244 No. references: 28 No. figures & tables: 5 Correspondence: Assoc. Prof. Uno Wennergren, +46 13 281666, unwen@ifm.liu.se Abstract Ecological theory states that complex food webs are unstable and extinction-prone but yet species rich natural food webs do exist. This study analyse how temporal and spatial components may stabilize interactions between species. Our analyses indicate that a single measure of stability, as CV, could be misleading. It does not reflecting significant changes in mean densities. The ‘diamond shaped’ food web responds to an increased environmental variance by an increase of the rare species and a decrease of the most abundant species. The shift in relative abundances indicates an increase in food web stability with environmental variation. The stabilisation of environmental variation decreased with increased redness while a further increase in reality, linking environmental variation to spatially subdivided populations, increased the stabilising effect. Spatial and temporal components, jointly included and analysed with care, may become a new basis for explaining the existence of large and diverse food webs. Introduction Species rich natural food webs contain complex interaction patterns evolved through historical processes in dynamic environments (May 1973). Food webs are known to endure unstable environments for several generations (Vasseur & Fox 2007). However, theoretical studies predict that large complex food webs should be unstable and extinction-prone because of high connectance, many modes of oscillation and positive feedback loops (May 1973; Tilman 1999; Green & Sadedin 2005; Borrvall & Ebenman 2008). The inability of explaining nature’s diversity implies that population dynamic theory lacks important components. Furthermore, the stability analysis itself may not be sufficient. Density regulation, environmental autocorrelation and dispersal are known to affect local population dynamics and should be included in investigations regarding population dynamics and extinction risks (Engen et al. 2002). Coupling of asymmetric interaction pathways have been shown to facilitate food web complexity (Polis 1991; McCann et al. 1998). The diamond shaped food web has previously been used to identify stabilizing effects of consumer asynchrony (McCann et al. 1998) and weak-to-moderate environmental variation (Vasseur and Fox 2007). In this study, we investigate how coloured environmental variation and spatial structure affect the same food web by performing a thorough analysis of stability. Food web stability is often measured as variability, which usually is calculated as the coefficient of variation, standard deviation divided by the mean (McCann 2000). Decreased variability implies decreased population variance which is likely to lower extinction risk (Lande 1993; McCann 2000). However, measurements of the coefficient of variation, CV, may not be enough for determining food webs ability to withstand stress. An increase in stability, measured as CV, can imply an increase in mean density and a decrease in variance, or only one of these. A population consisting of just a few individuals can misleadingly be seen as robust to stress as long as its variance is low in comparison to its mean. To address the risk of misinterpreting results of stability, we evaluate mean and variance one by one in addition to standard variability measurements of food web biomass and species abundances. The environmental variance, measured in impact and frequency of extreme weather events, is increasing (Easterling et al. 2000). The change in climate is likely to cause increased variability and extinction risk of ecological systems (Lande 1993; Halley & Dempster 1996; Ripa & Lundberg 1996; Ripa & Lundberg 1996; Kaitala et al. 1997; Fontaine & Gonzalez 2005). When investigating the effect of environmental variation, it is important to consider different magnitudes of variance. Another important property of environmental variation is its correlation in time. Variation found in nature is considered to be the best represented by pink 1/f noise (Caswell & Cohen 1995; Halley 1996; Ripa & Lundberg 1996; Cuddington & Yodzis 1999). It describes correlations in many different scales and does not priorities between timescales of disturbances (Halley 1996). In order to investigate the effect of environmental variation on food webs, we incorporate 1/f noise with different magnitudes of variance and redness. In addition to variation in time, nature also contains variation in space. Landscapes are known to include different biotic and abiotic conditions giving rise to spatially separated subpopulations occupying patches. Dispersal between subpopulations enables re-establishments which can prolong the whole population’s time to extinction (Engen et al. 2002; Liebhold et al. 2004; Greenman & Benton 2005). Subpopulations within the diamond shaped food web fluctuate in stable limit cycles when existing in a constant environment (McCann et al. 1998, Vasseur and Fox 2007). These intrinsic dynamics makes it possible to study how dispersal alone affects how subpopulations fluctuate in relation to each other, termed (sub-) population synchrony (reviewed in Bjørnstad et al. 1999). Subpopulation synchrony determines if stability on landscape level will be different than stability on patch level. When modelling subpopulations in a landscape which also include variable environmental conditions, one has to identify each subpopulation specific environmental variation and their relation. Are all subpopulations affected by the same variation or are they affected by different environmental variation depending on patch specific conditions? Hence the landscape dimension includes not only the subpopulations themselves but also how stochasticity is distributed in space. Furthermore, each patch is populated by a food web, in our study consisting of four species. Different species situated in the same patch may respond differently to the same environmental variation. This food web dimension implies yet another level of synchrony of environmental stochasticities. By varying the cross-correlation of environmental time series affecting the species and their subpopulations, we simulate differences both in patch specific conditions and species environmental response. Crosscorrelation of environmental variation will affect population synchrony. Synchrony can be measured both between subpopulations and between species. In this study, we will only measure synchrony between species. Synchrony between species has been shown to have a substantial effect on food web stability and extinction risk. Asynchronous consumers coupled with uncorrelated environmental variation can improve food web stability (1/CV) by dampening oscillations between resource and consumers (McCann et al. 1998; Vasseur & Fox 2007). A positive correlation in species environmental response implies a lower species extinction risk than during uncorrelated response (Borrvall & Ebenman 2008). We measure synchrony between species, according to Vasseur and Fox (2007). In addition, we measure the correlation between each species and their environmental variation. By measuring this correlation we aim to increase the understanding of how environmental variation affects how species fluctuate in relation to each other. This study addresses how the stability of food webs is affected by coloured environmental variation and spatial structure. We simulate the same diamond shaped food web used in McCann et al. (1998) and Vasseur and Fox (2007) in order to clarify the implications of these additional components. Vasseur and Fox (2007) showed that weak-to-moderate environmental variation can stabilise the diamond shaped food web. We show that redness decrease the stabilising effect of environmental variation whereas dispersal, coupled with uncorrelated response, has a strong stabilising effect. While dispersal increased the stability by increasing mean biomass and lowering the variance of densities, weak-to-moderate environmental variation actually decreased mean biomass. Single measures of stability did not show the full picture. However, moderate environmental variation caused a change in the relative abundance of species increasing the density of the species with the smallest population in a constant environment. This food web would be more resistant to additional stresses, such as demographic stochasticity and catastrophes, yet the stability, measured as CV, is reduced in comparison to the food web with a constant environment. Method The diamond shaped food web contains four species. Two consumers share one resource and have one common predator (Fig. 1). The dynamics are described by a continuous-time differential equation system, modelled by Vasseur & Fox (2007) after McCann et al. (1998). Resources grow logistically and consumers and predator have natural background mortality. Consumption is limited by a type II nonlinear functional response (Yodzis & Innes 1992; McCann et al. 1998; Vasseur & Fox 2007). The parameter values above the splitting line in Table 1 are the same as in Vasseur and Fox (2007). The parameters are biologically plausible, estimated from studies on species’ body mass versus metabolic and ingestion rate (Dickie et al. 1987; Yodzis & Innes 1992; McCann et al. 1998; Vasseur & Fox 2007). Resource gain and predator preference are set higher for C1 than for C2. C1 is the strongest resource competitor and preferred prey of P. The competition irregularity causes intrinsic asynchronous fluctuations of consumers. Species densities fluctuate in stable limit cycles in constant environment. The standard deviation, σenv, and cross-correlation, ρenv, of environmental variation are independent parameters affecting the consumers. Environmental variation affects the two consumers’ mortality rates through an exponential filter (Gillooly et al. 2001; Vasseur & Fox 2007): where is the mortality rate at time t, is the medial mortality rate and is the environmental variation at time t for consumer k in patch i. Until this point, our method is the same as in Vasseur and Fox (2007). We have added an additional index, i, to the differential equation system (Fig. 1) which represents the spatial dimension and hence the patch number. Furthermore we have included the environmental variation filter (eq 1). The second part of this method description incorporates our additional components, starting off with colour in the environmental variation. At first, uncorrelated white environmental variation was generated from a random normal distribution with zero mean and σenv2 variance. Thereafter, we used Fourier transform to add colour to the environmental variation. The discrete Fourier transform of the coloured environmental 1/f noise, P(ƒ), was scaled according to: where ƒ is frequency, X(ƒ) is the discrete Fourier transform of the previously generated white environmental variation and the colour of P(ƒ) was determined by the value of the spectral exponent, γenv, where γenv = 0 gives white and γenv > 0 gives red noise. After colouring the time series, inverse Fourier transform was used on P(ƒ) to generate the coloured environmental variation, env(t). The food web model was integrated across a range of σenv, 0 to 0.6 in steps of 0.05, and γenv, 0 to 0.6 in steps of 0.2. In order to determine the effect of dispersal between spatially separated subpopulations, the measurements in our study were taken from one patch in the landscape. Patches, containing the food web, were either isolated or connected with the other patches by dispersal. Dispersal between subpopulations was governed by a mass-action mixing process without distance dependence. Subpopulations with dispersal were connected through a dispersal matrix and their dynamics were described by a differential equation system (modelled after Caswell 2001 and Wennergren et al. 1995): where Popds,i is the density of species s in patch i when all subpopulations are connected with dispersal. s is an element of the set {P, C1, C2, R} and i is an element of the set {1, 2,..., 6}. dPops,i/dt is the differential equation for species s in patch i when isolated without dispersal (Fig. 1). L is the total number of patches, L=6. di,j is the proportion of the subpopulation in patch i that migrate to patch j in one time step. Migrating proportions, di,j, were generated from a random normal distribution with mean 1/L and variance 0.2/ L. The distribution was truncated by 0 and 1.2/ L. The time series of environmental variation affecting the consumers were cross-correlated, with ρenv = -1, 0 or 1. In addition to varying the cross-correlation of environmental variation affecting the two consumer species, as in Vasseur & Fox 2007, we have added differences in cross-correlation of environmental variation affecting subpopulations of the same species. ρenv = -1 represented perfect negative cross-correlation between all pairs of time series affecting different consumer species. All subpopulations within the same species were affected by the same environmental time series. For ρenv = 0, both consumer species and all their subpopulations were affected by unique independent environmental time series. ρenv = 1 represented perfect positive cross-correlation, both consumer species and all their subpopulations were affected by the same time series of environmental variation. Simulations were made in MATLAB 7.5.0 (R2007b, The Mathworks, Natick, MA, USA) with 100 replicates and 3000 time-steps. Initial subpopulation densities where chosen on the same uniform interval; 0.1 to 1.0, as in Vasseur and Fox (2007). Extinction risk was calculated as the risk of populations decreasing below the extinction boundary 10-6 and by how many replicates that had all subpopulations staying above the extinction boundary until the end of the simulation. We chose to use the same extinction boundary, for isolated subpopulations, as in Vasseur and Fox (2007). With dispersal, populations were considered to decrease below the extinction boundary when the sum of all six subpopulations within species decreased below 10-6. Replicates with extinctions were only analysed in respect to extinction risk. The first quarter of the simulated time series was excluded from analysis to avoid initial transients. Mean, variance and stability of subpopulation density, species density and food web biomass, consumer synchrony and extinction risk were calculated for each of the combinations of varied parameters. Food web biomass was the sum of all species densities in one patch. Stability was measured as in Vasseur and Fox (2007), through: where CV is the coefficient of variation, σx the standard deviation and μx the mean of population x’s density time series. Consumer synchrony was calculated as in Vasseur and Fox (2007), through: where T is time series length, σk standard deviation and μk mean of consumer species k’s time series. The cross-correlation between each consumer and its environmental variation was calculated as equation (5), when ρenv =1, in order to evaluate the impact of environmental variation on each consumer. Results The magnitude of environmental variance was of great importance for food web stability and extinction risk. Weak-to-moderate variance lowered variability of biomass and all species densities, except the resource, whereas higher variance destabilises the system (Fig. 2a, d, Fig. 3a). Compare results regarding the stability of C1, C2 and P (Fig. 2a) with Fig. 2b, c and d in Vasseur and Fox (2007). The standard deviation of environmental variation, σenv, generating maximum stability, was species specific. C1 and P gained their maximum stability from higher σenv than C2 and R. The same pattern was found for each value of cross-correlation of environmental variation, ρenv. Reddening of the environmental variation decreased the stabilising effect of weak-to-moderate σenv and enhanced the destabilising effect of higher σenv. In addition, it lowered the σenv values generating maximum stability (Fig. 2d). Dispersal had minor affect during correlated environmental variation (Fig. 3). However, during uncorrelated environmental variation, the stabilising effect of weak-to-moderate σenv was enhanced and the destabilising effect of higher σenv was reduced with dispersal (Fig. 2d, Fig. 3). Studies on time series of biomass and species abundances revealed that addition of dispersal between subpopulations resulted in maintenance of intrinsic dynamics during moderate σenv. The stable limit cycles where not as apparent in isolated patches during the same environmental variance (Fig. 4). Mean food web biomass decreased and biomass variance increased with increasing σenv (Fig. 2e, f), regardless of ρenv. However, a constant environment did not give the lowest variance in biomass. Weak-to-moderate σenv actually resulted in a minor decrease in biomass variance. Measurements on time series of species densities showed that the value of σenv affected the relative abundance of species (Fig. 2b). Mean density of the species with the smallest population in constant environment, C1, increased with increased σenv. In contrast to C1, high σenv decreased mean density and resulted in a major increase in variance for the largest species in constant environment, C2 (Fig. 2c). Mean density of R increased whereas the mean of P decreased with increased σenv. Reddening of the environmental variation enhanced the effects of increased σenv on biomass (Fig. 2e, f) and each species (results not shown). The same change in relative species abundance occurred, but for lower values of σenv. Dispersal coupled with uncorrelated environmental variation reduced the effects of increasing σenv on food web biomass (Fig. 2e, f) and species densities (results not shown). Subpopulation extinction risk increased with increased σenv, regardless of the value of ρenv. ρenv = -1 gave the highest extinction risk whereas ρenv =1 gave the lowest. A similar pattern was found for each species, where C2 showed the highest sensitivity to increased σenv. Reddening of the environmental variation increased population extinction risk whereas dispersal coupled with uncorrelated environmental variation reduced the risk of extinction. Consumer synchrony increased with increased σenv, regardless of ρenv. Results are in line with Vasseur and Fox (2007). Reddening of the environmental variation enhanced this effect whereas dispersal coupled with uncorrelated environmental variation reduced the synchronising effect of increased σenv. Both consumers become increasingly negatively correlated with their environmental variation during weak-to moderate σenv. However, results differed for σenv values above 0.3. The negative correlation between C1 and the environmental variation continued to increase while the negative correlation between C2 and environmental variation started to decrease for higher σenv. Reddening of the environmental variation amplified the effect whereas dispersal coupled with uncorrelated environmental variation decreased the effect of increased σenv. The pattern of differences in correlation was retained for all different scenarios tested. Discussion The diamond shaped food web was first used by McCann et al. (1998) to show stabilising effects of consumer asynchrony in constant environments. Vasseur and Fox (2007) simulated the same food web and investigated the effects of environmental variation. By simulating the same model, used in these two well done studies, our aim was to clarify the implications of coloured environmental variation and spatial structure on the stability of food webs. We show that redness decreases the stabilising effect of environmental variation whereas dispersal between spatially subdivided populations increases the stability of the system. In addition of using the same stability analysis as in Vasseur and Fox (2007), we also include direct analysis of mean and variation of densities. We initiate our investigation by confirming results of Vasseur and Fox (2007): (i) weakto-moderate environmental variation increases the system’s stability coefficient, 1/CV, by dampening predator fluctuations, (ii) stronger environmental variation increases the variability of densities, destabilising the system. Results from our study reveal that measuring stability only by 1/CV can be misleading. When environmental variation increases the stability coefficient it also causes a decrease in food web biomass (Fig. 2e). Decreased biomass implies increased system sensitivity to demographic stochasticity and catastrophes with increased extinction risks as a result (Lande 1993). Independent studies of mean and variance of densities also show that variation over time can shift the relative abundance of species in the food web, increasing the density of the smallest population, C1 (Fig. 2b). The shift is caused by C1 having a better ability to make use of the resource than C2 during high environmental variance. In contrast to C2, C1 was increasingly negatively correlated with the environmental variation during the whole interval of increasing σenv. C2:s poor resource tracking abilities resulted in high density variance. The high variance gave C2 the highest extinction risk at high σenv, despite being the species with the largest mean density. Shifts in relative abundance with increased σenv indicate that addition of stress factors, such as catastrophes and demographic stochasticity, may affect the relationship between extinction risk and environmental variance. Moderate environmental variation may decrease system extinction risks by increasing the density of the species with the lowest population in a constant environment. Further studies including these mechanisms may clarify the effect of environmental variation and the importance of multiple measures when analysing food web stability and extinction risk. The second phase of our investigation was to add additional components to the diamond shaped food web. Environmental variation is considered to be positively correlated in time (Caswell & Cohen 1995; Halley 1996; Ripa & Lundberg 1996; Cuddington & Yodzis 1999). Positively correlated, red, variation is dominated by low frequencies. This property results in bad/good conditions being retained for several time steps. Red variation gives populations more time to respond to differences in their environment, increasing the probability of environmental fluctuation tracking (Ripa & Lundberg 1996). The stabilising power of weakto-moderate environmental variation was reduced and extinction risks where increased with increased redness. These results are explained by reddened environmental variation causing larger density variance than white environmental variation (Fig. 2f), compare with Greenman and Benton (2005). Cuddington and Yodzis (1999) support our results by showing that reddening of variation can decrease mean persistence time in overcompensating single population models. Reddening of the environmental variation also amplified the shift in relative abundances of species and increased consumer synchronisation. That redness may increase the positive correlation between populations has also been shown in Greenman and Benton (2005). Reduced stabilizing effects and increased extinction risks caused by redness reduce the importance of environmental variation as an important stabilising property of food webs. However, addition of dispersal between subdivided populations re-emphasizes the importance of abiotic variability. Dispersal had a strong stabilising effect during uncorrelated environmental variation (Fig. 2d, Fig. 3, Fig. 4). Individuals from patches with good conditions were able to migrate to patches with poor conditions, compare with result of Engen et al. (2002) or Liebhold et al. (2004). The migration undermined consumer synchronisation and evened out destabilising effect of environmental variation. The equalising effect caused by dispersal had major implications for food web stability and extinction risks. The food web with dispersal affected by highly red environmental variation was more stable than the food web in an isolated patch with white variation (Fig. 2d). Extinction risks with dispersal were actually close to zero, for environmental variance and redness used in our study. Higher σenv values generated similar destabilising effects of redness as in the case with isolated subpopulations. Kaitala et al. (1997) supports our results by showing that increased system complexity can reduce the effect of redness. Engen et al. (2002) showed that increasing dispersal between patches, withholding single species, results in longer time to extinction. Mass action mixing, as in our study, has no distance dependence. This infers similar probabilities of dispersal between all patches. The assumption can be far from dispersal found in nature. However, results from Petchey et al. (1997) showed minor differences in population persistence when comparing landscapes with regional and local dispersal. Despite the lack of distance dependence, a minor increase in stability was observed in some patches when adding dispersal during correlated environmental variation. This effect can be explained by our dispersal matrixes generation method causing a variance in dispersal rates between patches. The small dispersal rate variance enables a rescue effect. The presented food web stabilities and extinction risks are measured at patch level. It is important to consider the differences between patch and landscape level when estimating food web resistance. The choice of scale will have major effect on estimated extinction risks. Our complementary measurements on landscape level showed that the stability, 1/CV, of the food web affected by σenv < 0.6 was much higher without dispersal than with dispersal, independent on ρenv. This appears to contradict our results obtained on patch level which showed that dispersal coupled with uncorrelated environmental variation lowers the extinction risks in the food web affected by σenv < 0.6. The differences between scales are caused by the spatial dimension affecting subpopulation synchrony. Isolated subpopulations, without dispersal, fluctuate in their own phase depending on initial densities and environmental variation. When measuring densities on landscape level, we take the sum of all subpopulation for each time step. The asynchrony between patches makes the summation of density time series to even out the fluctuations over time. This gave the landscape density time series a low variance and hence generated a high overall stability. With dispersal, subpopulations that initially fluctuate in their own phase became more synchronised by migration between patches (Bjørnstad et al. 1999). When taking the sum of such subpopulations, the variance of the time series will be more preserved resulting in a higher variance producing a lower stability. Our results implicate that if stability is measured by variance, as in CV, one have to be assured that the time series are not a summation of sets of local time series. We anticipate that this may become a problem in empirically work since it can be cumbersome to discriminate between subpopulations. The addition of coloured environmental variation and spatial structure had major implications on the stability and extinction risk of the diamond shaped food web. Redness decreased the stabilising effect of environmental variation whereas dispersal, coupled with uncorrelated response, stabilised the system. Dispersal increased the stability by increasing mean biomass and lowering the variance of densities. Weak-to-moderate environmental variation actually decreased mean biomass in the same time as it increased the value of the stability coefficient, 1/CV. Single measures of stability did not show the full picture. Environmental variation also caused a change in the relative abundance of species increasing the density of the species with the smallest population in a constant environment. The food web affected by moderate environmental variation would actually be more resistant to additional stresses, such as demographic stochasticity and catastrophes, than the same food web situated in a constant environment. However, shifts in relative abundances of species may have unexpected implications for species with present large population sizes. Large populations today may not insure species against future increase in environmental variance. Interaction pathways, exemplified in our study, have been shown to repeat at different resolutions, making food web stability scale invariant (McCann 2009). Our model may be seen as a building block for more complex food webs indicating that dispersal coupled by variability in space and time can be the missing component in theory explaining the existence of large and diverse food webs. Acknowledgements … Figure and table legends Figure 1 The diamond shaped food web with differential equation system (McCann et al. 1998; Vasseur and Fox 2007). The equation system is the same as in Fig. 1 in Vasseur and Fox (2007) except for our additional index, i, the patch number. P is the density of the top predator, C1 first consumer, C2 second consumer, R resource and Ωa,b, is the consumption preference of species a for species b. Table 1 Parameter explanation and their values. The constant parameters above the splitting line are the same as in Table 1 in Vasseur and Fox (2007). The food web model was integrated across a range of σenv (0 to 0.6 in steps of 0.05), γenv (0 to 0.6 in steps of 0.2) and ρenv (-1, 0 and 1). Figure 2 Stability, μ/σ, mean, μ, and variance, σ2, for species population densities and food web biomass with environmental fluctuation strength, σenv, and uncorrelated environmental variation, ρenv=0. Left column; measurements on species population densities with white environmental variation, γenv=0, without dispersal. P is predator, C1 first consumer, C2 second consumer and R resource. Right column; measurements on food web biomass with white and coloured environmental variation of γenv=0-0.6, without and with (crosshatch lines) dispersal. * P, C1 and C2 density stability as when ρenv=0 in Fig. 2b, c and d in Vasseur & Fox (2007). Figure 3 Stability of food web biomass, μB/σB, with standard deviation of environmental variation, σenv, and cross-correlation of environmental variation, ρenv. a) isolated patch b) patch connected by dispersal. 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