Data from: Food-web structure varies along environmental gradients in a high-latitude marine ecosystem ...

• Main Authors: Kortsch, Susanne, Primicerio, Raul, Aschan, Michaela, Lind, Sigrid, Dolgov, Andrey V., Planque, Benjamin
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2018
• Subjects: Food-web structure; 2004-2007; Arctic; Arctic Ocean; Barents Sea; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.k04q2kd; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.k04q2kd

Large-scale patterns in species diversity and community composition are associated with environmental gradients, but the implications of these patterns for food-web structure are still unclear. Here, we investigated how spatial patterns in food-web structure are associated with environmental gradients in the Barents Sea, a highly productive shelf sea of the Arctic Ocean. We compared food webs from 25 subregions in the Barents Sea and examined spatial correlations among food-web metrics, and between metrics and spatial variability in seawater temperature, bottom depth and number of days with ice cover. Several food-web metrics were positively associated with seawater temperature: connectance, level of omnivory, clustering, cannibalism, and high variability in generalism, while other food-web metrics such as modularity and vulnerability were positively associated with sea ice and negatively with temperature. Food-web metrics positively associated with habitat heterogeneity were: number of species, link ... : Barents Sea food websThe excel file contains 25 food webs of the Barents Sea. Sheet 1: Species names; Sheet 2. Subregion-by-species matrix; Sheet 3: Pairwise list of trophospecies interactions; Sheet 4: The Barents Sea metaweb. ...