Habitat fragmentation and food web disassembly

Abstract

Cagnolo, L., Valladares, G. (2011). Habitat fragmentation and food web disassembly. Ecosistemas 20(2-3):68-78

Habitat fragmentation, mediated by land use change, is one of the major threats to biodiversity. In a community, species are connected bytrophic relationships that comprise complex networks of interaction. Because of this, changes in abundance or loss of species may have indirect effects that spread and even magnify along the food chain. Therefore, understanding how species are lost and how these losses affect community organization are urgent challenges for ecologists. We evaluated the relationship between fragmentation and network structure by studying the changes in the structure of food webs of plant, insect herbivores and their parasitoids in forests of central Argentina. We found that the networks were affected by a reduction in size, and increased in relative interaction intensity and connectance as the forest area was reduced.