Disentangling the web of life.
Biodiversity research typically focuses on species richness and has often neglected interactions, either by assuming that such interactions are homogeneously distributed or by addressing only the interactions between a pair of species or a few species at a time. In contrast, a network approach provides a powerful representation of the ecological interactions among species and highlights their global interdependence. Understanding how the responses of pairwise interactions scale to entire assemblages remains one of the great challenges that must be met as society faces global ecosystem change.
Bascompte
Jordi
J
Integrative Ecology Group, Estación Biológica de Doñana, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Calle Américo Vespucio s/n, E-41092 Sevilla, Spain. bascompte@ebd.csic.es
D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D005075:Biological Evolution; D004463:Ecology / Q000379:methods; D020387:Food Chain; D010802:Phylogeny; D010944:Plants