What constrains food webs? A maximum entropy framework for predicting their structure with minimal biases
Fig 5
Proportions of single-link three-species motifs in empirical and predicted food webs.
S1: Tri-trophic chain (a top predator feeds on a meso-predator which feeds on a basal prey). S2: Omnivory (a top predator feeds on a meso-predator and a basal prey). S3: Tri-trophic feeding loop (a cyclic three-species predator-prey system). S4: Apparent competition (a predator feeds on two prey). S5: Exploitative competition (two predators feed on the same prey). Null 1: Type I null model based on connectance. MaxEnt 1: Type I heuristic MaxEnt model based on connectance. Null 2: Type II null model based on the joint degree sequence. MaxEnt 2: Type II heuristic MaxEnt model based on the joint degree sequence. Boxplots display the median proportion of each motif in food webs (middle horizontal lines), as well as the first (bottom horizontal lines) and third (top horizontal lines) quartiles. Vertical lines encompass all data points that fall within 1.5 times the interquartile range from both quartiles, and dots are data points that fall outside this range. Only the single-link motifs S1-S5 are shown given the scarcity of double-link motifs in most empirical and predicted networks.