02.11.2022Blue and green food webs respond differently to elevation and land use

Florian Altermatt and co-authors investigated how green and blue food webs are structured and how they change in response to climatic and human influences for the first time in a large, contiguous area - nearly 1000 sites distributed representatively throughout Switzerland.  Green and blue food webs are fundamentally different in their structural characteristics and also respond differently to changes in land use and elevation. These findings shed new light on measures to protect biodiversity. The key is to first protect the species that are most important to the food web. But to know which species, are essential, you need to know the blueprint and logic of the food web.

Read more about this exciting research published in Nature Communications here