Potential extinction cascades in a desert ecosystem: Linking food web interactions to community viability

Adam J. Eichenwald; Nina H. Fefferman; J. Michael Reed

doi:10.1002/ece3.10930

journal article Open Access Feb 01, 2024

Potential extinction cascades in a desert ecosystem: Linking food web interactions to community viability

Adam J. Eichenwald

Nina H. Fefferman J. Michael Reed

Ecology and Evolution Vol. 14 No. 2 · Wiley

View at Publisher Save 10.1002/ece3.10930

Abstract

AbstractDesert communities are threatened with species loss due to climate change, and their resistance to such losses is unknown. We constructed a food web of the Mojave Desert terrestrial community (300 nodes, 4080 edges) to empirically examine the potential cascading effects of bird extinctions on this desert network, compared to losses of mammals and lizards. We focused on birds because they are already disappearing from the Mojave, and their relative thermal vulnerabilities are known. We quantified bottom‐up secondary extinctions and evaluated the relative resistance of the community to losses of each vertebrate group. The impact of random bird species loss was relatively low compared to the consequences of mammal (causing the greatest number of cascading losses) or reptile loss, and birds were relatively less likely to be in trophic positions that could drive top‐down effects in apparent competition and tri‐tropic cascade motifs. An avian extinction cascade with year‐long resident birds caused more secondary extinctions than the cascade involving all bird species for randomized ordered extinctions. Notably, we also found that relatively high interconnectivity among avian species has formed a subweb, enhancing network resistance to bird losses.

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References

Details

Published: Feb 01, 2024
Vol/Issue: 14(2)
License: View

Authors

A

Adam J. Eichenwald

Department of Biology Tufts University Medford Massachusetts USA

N

Nina H. Fefferman

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology University of Tennessee Knoxville Tennessee USA

J

J. Michael Reed

Department of Biology Tufts University Medford Massachusetts USA

Cite This Article

Adam J. Eichenwald, Nina H. Fefferman, J. Michael Reed (2024). Potential extinction cascades in a desert ecosystem: Linking food web interactions to community viability. Ecology and Evolution, 14(2). https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.10930

Potential extinction cascades in a desert ecosystem: Linking food web interactions to community viability

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