Learning objectives
Updating the knowledge with the most recent advances in the field of food webs and ecosystem ecology. Learning methodological tools for investigating complex systems.
Course unit content
<br />Part I: The Structure of food webs<br />Predator-prey interactions and the structure of the food webs. Constructing a food web: from field studies to community maps. Food web as digraphs. Graphs and adjacency matrices. Food web statistics and structural patterns: web size, connectance, linkage density, feeding loops, omnivory.<br />Part II: Relations between structure and function in the food webs<br />Allometry in food websand efficiency in the distribution of energy. Dominator trees and keystone species. Strongly connected components and their ecological significance. Indirect iinteractions and their ecological role: from the cascading trophic interactions to functional patterns of interactions.
Bibliography
<br />Cohen J.E., Briand F., Newmann CM. 1990. Community food webs: data and theory - Biomathmatics, vol. 20. Springer, Berlino.<br /><br />Polis G.A., Winemiller K. 1996. Food Webs. Integration of petterns and Dynamics. Chapman & Hall, New York.<br /><br />Allesina S., Bodini A., Bondavalli, C. 2006. Secondary extinctions in ecological networks: bottlenecks unveiled. ECOLOGICAL MODELLING. In stampa.<br /><br />Allesina S., Bodini A. 2005. Food web networks: Scaling relation revisited. ECOLOGICAL COMPLEXITY, 2: 323-338.<br /><br />Allesina S., Bodini A., Bondavalli C. 2005. Ecological subsystems via graph theory: the role of strongly connected components. OIKOS 110: 164-176.<br /><br />Allesina S., Bodini A. 2004. Who dominates whom in the ecosystem? Energy flow bottlenecks and cascading extinctions. JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY, 230: 351-358.
Teaching methods
Lectures are based on Power point presentations. For the final assessment any student is requested to read understand a present the contents of a paper dealing with the topics of the course and that is published on an international journal.
