The Qualitative Analysis of Community Food Webs: Implications for Wildlife Management and Conservation

Biodiversity, the array of organisms living on earth, is experiencing now, more than ever, the uncontrolled assault of human activities. The consequence of this aggressive behaviour is that populations of plants and animals are being decimated across a broad geographic scale. Reducing the current rate of biodiversity loss has become an urgent task, and contributions are expected from many disciplines: ecology, economy, social sciences, political sciences and others. The ecological side of this challenge is filled with many unresolved issues still open to research, among which the understanding of how populations react to environmental stress occupies a central place. s article the role of community structure as a factor conditioning the response of populations to environmental disturbances is discussed. Four community food webs are examined through the use of a qualitative technique called loop analysis. Results obtained suggest that the structure of the interactions can be an appropriate locus of explanation for patterns of population response to environmental stress. Yet, complex functional networks may show counterintuitive behaviours that challenge our comprehension of effects of disturbances upon ecological communities, and yield results of interventions aimed to protect wildlife uncertain.