—Introduction of lake trout Salvelinus namaycush into a system can add a trophic level, potentially affecting organisms at lower trophic levels. Similar to many lakes and reservoirs in the western United States, lake trout were introduced into Yellowstone Lake, Wyoming. Previous studies showed that lake trout reduced the population and altered the size structure of native Yellowstone cutthroat ...

Humans are increasingly subsidizing and altering natural food webs via changes to nutrient cycling and productivity. Where human trophic subsidies are concentrated and persistent within natural environments, their consumption could have complex consequences for wild animals through altering habitat preferences, phenotypes and fitness attributes that influence population dynamics. Human trophic ...

We present a graph theoretic model of analysing food web structure called regular equivalence. Regular equivalence is a method for partitioning the species in a food web into "isotrophic classes" that play the same structural roles, even if they are not directly consuming the same prey or if they do not share the same predators. We contrast regular equivalence models, in which two species are m...

Plant diversity affects species richness and abundance of taxa at higher trophic levels. However, plant diversity effects on omnivores (feeding on multiple trophic levels) and their trophic and non-trophic interactions are not yet studied because appropriate methods were lacking. A promising approach is the DNA-based analysis of gut contents using next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. ...

A model is presented of competition between sensory axons for trophic molecules (e.g. a neurotrophin such as NGF), produced in a region of skin small enough to permit their free diffusion throughout it; e.g., a touch dome, or a vibrissal follicle hair sinus. The variables specified are the number of high affinity trophic factor receptors per axon terminal and the concentration of trophic factor...

Trophic cascades triggered by fishing have profound implications for marine ecosystems and the socioeconomic systems that depend on them. With the number of reported cases quickly growing, key features and commonalities have emerged. Fishery-induced trophic cascades often display differential response times and nonlinear trajectories among trophic levels and can be accompanied by shifts in alte...

A recurring pattern of declining mean trophic level of fisheries landings, termed "fishing down the food web," is thought to be indicative of the serial replacement of high-trophic-level fisheries with less valuable, low-trophic-level fisheries as the former become depleted to economic extinction. An alternative to this view, that declining mean trophic levels indicate the serial addition of lo...

Factors constraining the structure of food webs can be investigated by comparing classes of ecosystems. We find that pelagic ecosystems, those based on one-celled primary producers, have longer food chains than terrestrial ecosystems. Yet pelagic ecosystems have lower primary productivity, contrary to the hypothesis that greater energy flows permit higher trophic levels. We hypothesize that lon...

When deprived of trophic factors, the majority of cultured motor neurons undergo nitric oxide-dependent apoptosis. However, for reasons that have remained unclear, 30-50% of the motor neurons survive for several days without trophic factors. Here we hypothesize that the resistance of this motor neuron subpopulation to trophic factor deprivation can be attributed to diminished nitric oxide produ...

It is well recognized that assemblage structure of stream macroinvertebrates changes with alterations in catchment or local land use. Our objective was to understand how the trophic ecology of benthic macroinvertebrate assemblages responds to land use changes in tropical streams. We used the isotope methodology to assess how energy flow and trophic relations among macroinvertebrates were affect...