Qualitative network models of Mediterranean Sea marine food webs
Trabajo final presentado por Núria Patiño Sevillano para el Máster en Oceanografía y Gestión del Medio Marino impartido por la Universitat de Barcelona (UB), realizado bajo la dirección de Marta Coll y Jazel Ouled-Cheikh Bonan del Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC).-- 38 pages, 13 figures, 1 table, 2 annexes ; Marine ecosystems are globally threatened due to the effects of global change as a result of human activities, which can alter them at many scales, from individual physiological damage to the loss of ecosystem structure and subsequent deterioration of ecosystem functioning. This is particularly true in marine biodiversity hotspots, such as the Mediterranean Sea, as its basin is one of the most impacted areas in the world. In this sense, in order to develop informed conservation plans it is essential to understand the relationships among the species inhabiting it, and the interlinkages and dependencies between all its components. Food web analyses provide a representation of these relationships, and allow assessing system complexity and resilience. In this study, we aimed at depicting the qualitative food-web structure of the Mediterranean Sea and its main sub-regions, while visualizing its food-web structure and identifying the main similarities and differences between regions. We used the framework set up in a previous study, which built a general qualitative meta-web of the Mediterranean Sea and we substantially updated the results, providing new analysis of the ecological network per sub-regions: Western, Central, Eastern and the Adriatic Sea. We found that food-web information was lacking for many invertebrate species and other small predators, and it was especially scarce within the sub-region of the Central Mediterranean Sea. We also found that while the four sub-regions had many similarities on their food-web structure, the most complex in terms of trophic linkages was the Central Mediterranean one and the least complex was the Adriatic Sea one. Overall, this study makes a significant contribution to the research about the Mediterranean marine ecosystems, can help scientists to identify future research objectives and can be used by policy makers to make informed decisions within a complex system-thinking context to archive a sustainable future ; This study acknowledges the 'Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence' accreditation (CEX2019- 000928-S) to the Institute of Marine Science (ICM-CSIC) and it is a contribution to the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 869300 (FutureMARES project)