The structure of food web networks can affect the maintenance of diversity and ecosystem function in ecological communities. The extent to which the structure of communities in similar environmental conditions but in different parts of the world converges is a longstanding question in ecology and evolution. Anthropogenic disturbances, however, may complicate the opportunity to make robust community comparisons. We investigated the food web structure of ground-dwelling mammal communities in 14 protected forests in the Neo-, Afro-, and Asian tropics to test for 1) effects of anthropogenic disturbance and 2) convergence in food web network structure. Mammal communities were identified from camera traps, forest fragmentation was calculated from remotely sensed forest cover data, hunting information was obtained from local managers, and predator-prey interaction data were collected from published literature.
Results/Conclusions
We found that mammal food web structure did not vary significantly with anthropogenic disturbance, but did vary significantly between continents. Continental differences in mammal food web structure were not significantly associated with forest fragmentation (measured as the percent forested and forest edge density per community) or hunting (measured as the percent of populations hunted per community). However, mammal communities in the Neotropics had significantly higher directed connectance (mean = 0.15, SD=0.02) than mammal communities in Africa (mean = 0.06, SD=0.02) or Southeast Asia (mean = 0.07, SD=0.01). The fraction of isolated nodes was highest in the Afro-tropics (mean=0.19, SD=0.13), lowest in the Neotropics (mean=0.01, SD=0.02), and differed significantly between all continents. These results suggest that tropical forest protected areas are an important conservation tool for conserving biodiversity and ecosystem function. Furthermore, continental-level variation in mammalian food web structure may be the product of ecological and evolutionary forces.