June 21, 2013 — Closely related species consume the same resources less often than more remotely related species. In fact, it is the competition for resources, and not their kinship, which determines the food sources of the species of a community. Under the effect of this competition, closely related species have specialized on different food resources. This is the conclusion of a study carried out by researchers from CNRS, the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle and Exeter University (United Kingdom). These results were obtained by studying trophic interactions between species at an extraordinary level of detail in an English meadow.
Published on 20 June 2013 in the journal Current Biology, the work provides important insights into the evolution of ecological communities at a time when certain are being disrupted by climate change and the arrival of invasive species.
In ecology, the present paradigm considers that kinship relations between species determine the identity of the partners with which the species interact: the more closely related the species, the more chance they have of interacting with the same partners. Thus, according to this view, two closely related species should share the same predators and the same preys. Recent work carried out by a team of researchers from CNRS, the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle and Exeter University shows that this is not necessarily the case. For the first time, the scientists have shown that although kinship between species effectively determines what feeds on species, it is competition for resources and not degree of kinship that determines what species feed on.
To arrive at this conclusion, they made a series of observations over a ten-year period in a meadow in the south east of England. These observations, carried out at an extraordinary level of detail, made it possible to establish the interactions between one hundred or so species situated on four trophic levels: plants (23 species), aphids that feed on these plants (25 species), wasps that lay their eggs in the bodies of the aphids (22 species), and other wasps that lay their eggs in the larvae of the preceding wasps inside aphids (26 species).
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