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Selforganizology, 2015, 2(2): 21-34
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Article

Effects of parasitism on robustness of food webs

LiQin Jiang1, WenJun Zhang 1,2
1School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China
2International Academy of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Hong Kong

Received 12 February 2015;Accepted 19 March 2015;Published online 1 June 2015
IAEES

Abstract
Food webs are always self-organizing systems. Parasitism is ubiquitous and important in the food webs. In present study we analyzed the CSM food web with parasites and the predator-prey sub-web without parasites based on some topological indices in order to understand the effects of parasitism on robustness of food webs. The results showed that parasites dominated the food web links. The full CSM food web had more basal species and preys, and the predator-prey sub-web without parasites had more top species and predators. Existence of parasitism did not affect the similarity degree of free-living species, but would reduce the robustness of food web and increase intervality and clustering coefficient of food web.

Keywords parasites;CSM;food web;similarity;robustness;intervality;clustering coefficient.


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