Owen L. Petchey

University of Zurich

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Andrew P. Beckerman

University of Sheffield

Frank Pennekamp

University of Zurich

Dylan Z. Childs

University of Sheffield

Uriah Daugaard

University of Zurich

Rainer M. Krug

University of Zurich

Bernhard Schmid

University of Zurich

Guy Woodward

Imperial College London

Kevin J. Gaston

University of Exeter

Gian Marco Palamara

Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

Michael E. Schaepman

University of Zurich

Cooperative Institutions

University of Zurich

101

John Wiley & Sons (United States)

Ecological Society of America

Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Google (United States)

Imperial College London

University of Sheffield

Queen Mary University of London

Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology

Institut de Biologia Evolutiva

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Size, foraging, and food web structure

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2008)

Owen L. Petchey Andrew P. Beckerman Jens Riede Philip H. Warren

Understanding what structures ecological communities is vital to answering questions about extinctions, environmental change, trophic cascades, and ecosystem functioning. Optimal foraging theory was conceived to increase such understanding by providing a framework with which to predict species interactions and resulting community structure. Here, we use an optimal foraging model and allometries of foraging variables to predict the structure of real food webs. The qualitative structure of the resulting model provides a more mechanistic basis for the phenomenological rules of previous models. Quantitative analyses show that the model predicts up to 65% of the links in real food webs. The deterministic nature of the model allows analysis of the model's successes and failures in predicting particular interactions. Predacious and herbivorous feeding interactions are better predicted than pathogenic, parasitoid, and parasitic interactions. Results also indicate that accurate prediction and modeling of some food webs will require incorporating traits other than body size and diet choice models specific to different types of feeding interaction. The model results support the hypothesis that individual behavior, subject to natural selection, determines individual diets and that food web structure is the sum of these individual decisions.

Optimal foraging theory

10.1073/pnas.0710672105

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Citations (542)

dmdScheme: An R package for working with Domain specific MetaData Schemes

Rainer M. Krug Owen L. Petchey

10.5281/zenodo.3581970

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Food web structure and energy flux dynamics, but not taxonomic richness, influence microbial ecosystem functions in a Sphagnum-dominated peatland

European Journal of Soil Biology (2023)

Vincent E. J. Jassey Owen L. Petchey Philippe Binet Alexandre Buttler Geneviève Chiapusio

Decomposer

Soil Food Web

10.1016/j.ejsobi.2023.103532

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Citations (7)

Stability metrics calculation at the Jena Experiment field

Sofia J. van Moorsel Terhi Hahl Owen L. Petchey Anne Ebeling Nico Eisenhauer

10.1594/pangaea.923188

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Data package for: "Functional diversity can facilitate the collapse of an undesirable ecosystem state"

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2022)

Owen L. Petchey Rainer M. Krug Uriah Daugaard Romana Limberger

Data package accompanying the paper "Functional diversity can facilitate the collapse of an undesirable ecosystem state". The data package includes: Results and parameter of the experiments Measures extracted from the results for the paper intermediate data used for plotting The code is available at ENTER DOI

R package

10.5281/zenodo.7351466

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Biomass analysis at the Jena Experiment field site from 2012 to 2015

Sofia J. van Moorsel Terhi Hahl Owen L. Petchey Anne Ebeling Nico Eisenhauer

10.1594/pangaea.923213

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Learning from COVID-19: A roadmap for integrated risk assessment and management across shocks of pandemics, biodiversity loss, and climate change

Environmental Science & Policy (2024)

Anna Scolobig Maria J. Santos R. D. Willemin Richard Kock Stefano Battiston

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the fragility of international, national, regional, and local risk management systems. It revealed an urgent need to improve risk planning, preparedness, and communication strategies. In parallel, it created an opportunity to drastically re-think and transform societal processes and policies to prevent future shocks originating not only from health, but also combined with those related to climate change and biodiversity loss. In this perspective, we examine how to improve integrated risk assessment and management (IRAM) capacities to address interconnected shocks. We present the results from a series of workshops within the framework of the University of Zurich and University of Geneva. Initiative "Shaping Resilient Societies: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach to Create a Responsive Society". This initiative gathered experts from multiple disciplines to discuss their perspectives on resilience; here we present the key messages of the "Pandemics, Climate and Sustainability" thinking group. We identify a roadmap and selected research areas concerning the improvement of IRAM analysis capacities, practices, policies. We recommend the development of robust data systems and science-policy advice systems to address combined shocks emerging from health, biodiversity loss and climate change. We posit that further developing the IRAM framework to include these recommendations will improve societal preparedness and response capacity and will provide more empirical evidence supporting decision-making and the selection of strategies and measures for integrated risk reduction.

Pandemic

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak

10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103726

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Citations (1)

Evolutionary rescue can be impeded by temporary environmental amelioration - Dataset

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (2021)

Yi‐Qi Hao Rainer M. Krug Quan‐Guo Zhang Owen L. Petchey Michael A. Brockhurst

Rapid evolutionary adaptation has the potential to rescue from extinction populations experienc- ing environmental changes. Little is known, however, about the impact of short-term environmen- tal fluctuations during long-term environmental deterioration, an intrinsic property of realistic environmental changes. Temporary environmental amelioration arising from such fluctuations could either facilitate evolutionary rescue by allowing population recovery (a positive demo- graphic effect) or impede it by relaxing selection for beneficial mutations required for future sur- vival (a negative population genetic effect). We address this uncertainty in an experiment with populations of a bacteriophage virus that evolved under deteriorating conditions (gradually increasing temperature). Periodic environmental amelioration (short periods of reduced tempera- ture) caused demographic recovery during the early phase of the experiment, but ultimately reduced the frequency of evolutionary rescue. These experimental results suggest that environmen- tal fluctuations could reduce the potential of evolutionary rescue.

10.5281/zenodo.4762212

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Rapid evolution allows plant communities to regain stability after simulated species loss

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (2019)

Sofia J. van Moorsel Terhi Hahl Owen L. Petchey Anne Ebeling Nico Eisenhauer

Abstract Experiments simulating species loss from grassland ecosystems have shown that losing biodiversity decreases the ability of ecosystems to buffer disturbances. However, plant or plant-soil evolutionary processes may allow ecosystems to regain stability and resilience over time. We explored such effects in a long-term grassland biodiversity experiment. Low diversity communities of plants with a history of co-occurrence (selected communities) were temporally more stable than the same communities of plants with no such history (naive communities). Furthermore, selected communities showed greater recovery following a major flood, resulting in more stable post-flood productivity. These results were consistent across soil treatments simulating the presence or absence of co-selected microbial communities. We suggest that plant evolution in a community context can increase ecosystem temporal stability and resistance to disturbances. Evolution can thus in part compensate for extreme species loss as can high plant diversity in part compensate for the missing opportunity of evolutionary adjustments.

Ecological stability

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How puzzles are shaping our understanding of biodiversity: A call for more research into biodiversity representation in educational games

GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society (2022)

María Alejandra Parreño Sara Petchey Mollie Chapman Florian Altermatt Norman Backhaus

Games as a didactic tool (e. g., puzzles) are gaining recognition in environmental education to promote skill development, but also to develop a specific understanding of the natural world. However, a children’s puzzle containing representations of nature may unwillingly lead to “misconceptions” of biodiversity themes and processes, and an over-simplification of the relationship between people and nature. To solve this problem, positive connotations of biodiversity may prompt a conceptual change to a more nuanced, multifaceted conception of biodiversity.

Representation

10.14512/gaia.31.3.3

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