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Science 21 August 1992:
Vol. 257. no. 5073, pp. 1107 - 1109
DOI: 10.1126/science.257.5073.1107
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Articles

Scale and Structure in Natural Food Webs

Karl Havens 1

1 Department of Biological Sciences and Water Resources Research Institute, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242

The degree to which widely accepted generalizations about food web structure apply to natural communities was determined through examination of 50 pelagic webs sampled consistently with even taxonomic resolution of all trophic levels. The fraction of species in various trophic categories showed no significant overall trends as the number of species varied from 10 to 74. In contrast, the number of links per species increased fourfold over the range of species number, suggesting that the link-species scaling law, defined on the basis of aggregated webs, does not reflect a real ecological trend.


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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)