Community Ecology
Volume/Issue:
Volume 4: Issue 1
Quantifying the importance of species and their interactions in a host-parasitoid community
Authors:
F. Jordán Institute of Ecology and Botany of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Vácrátót, Hungary Please ask the editor of the journal.

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,
W.-C. Liu NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College at Silwood Park, Ascot Berkshire SL5 7PY, UK

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, and
J.F. van Veen NERC Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College at Silwood Park, Ascot Berkshire SL5 7PY, UK

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Pages:
79–88
Online Publication Date:
22 Jul 2005
Publication Date:
01 Jun 2003
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1556/comec.4.2003.1.12
Keywords:
Indirect effects; Indirect effects; host-parasitoid community; Interaction strength; Interaction symmetry; Keystone species; Network algebra; Phyllonorycter
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We present a new method to asses the strength of indirect interactions and to indentify candidate keystone species in quantitative food webs. We apply this method to the structural analysis of a host-parasitoid community. The strength and symmetry of indirect interactions between 12 leaf-miner hosts and their 27 hymenopteran parasitoids are quantified. It is shown that (1) quantifying longer pathways helps in determining which species have more important direct or indirect effects on others, (2) a keystone pattern of relative species importance, based on positionality in the interaction network, seems to characterize this community, (3) considering longer pathways results in a characteristic “few strong - many weak” distribution of interaction strength, and (4) between the majority of species pairs the interaction is weakly asymmetrical. We emphasise that a very simple network algebra approach may offer important predictions on both species- and community-level patterns.

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Cover Community Ecology
Community Ecology An Interdisciplinary Journal Reporting Progress in Community and Population Studies
Print ISSN:
1585-8553
Online ISSN:
1588-2756

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Community Ecology
Language English
Size A4
Year of
Foundation		 2000
Volumes
per Year		 1
Issues
per Year		 3
Founder Akadémiai Kiadó
Founder's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
CH-6330 Cham, Switzerland Gewerbestrasse 11.
Responsible
Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 1585-8553 (Print)
ISSN 1588-2756 (Online)

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