Trophic Signatures of Marine Organisms in the Mediterranean as Compared with Other Ecosystems Rainer Froese1, Stefan Garthe2, Daniel Pauly3, Uwe Piatkowski1 1) Institute of Marine Research, Düsternbrooker Weg 20, 24105 Kiel, Germany, rfroese@ifm.uni-kiel.de 2) Research and Technology Centre (FTZ), University of Kiel, Hafentörn, 25761 Büsum, Germany 3) Fisheries Centre, 2204 Main Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1Z4

Content of Presentation Large Marine Ecosystems Material and Methods Comparing the Mediterranean Scale-free Networks

Large Marine Ecosystems An Introduction to LMEs >> What are the LMEs >>

Material & Methods What are Trophic Levels? >> >> How to Estimate Trophic Levels >> >> Marine Mammals Data (Daniel Pauly) Marine Birds Data (Stephan Garthe) Cephalopod Data (Uwe Piatkowski) Fish Data (www.fishbase.org) >>

How to Estimate Trophic Levelss Troph = mean troph of food items + 1 where the mean is weighted by the contribution of the different food items TL = (50% * TL1 + 50% * TL 2 ) / 100% + 1 = 2.5 <<

Global Marine Fish Species by Trophic Level

Fish in the Mediterranean

Mediterranean vs Tropical

Mediterranean vs Temperate

Comparison of Six LMEs

Size of Mediterranean Fishes

Size in other LMEs

Mediterranean Size vs Other LMEs

Distribution vs Length

Distribution vs Length: Mediterranean

Mammals, Birds and Cephalopods in the Mediterranean

Mammals, Birds, and Cephalopods in the North Sea

Trophic Pyramid Mediterranean

Trophic Pyramid North Sea

Summary on Trophic Signatures Trophic signatures represent long-term characteristics of ecosystems They are useful to compare and classify ecosystems Trophic species pyramids also appear to be promising decriptors Taxonomy and trophic relationships of invertebrates need more attention

Distributions I Many biological parameters have a normal or log-normal distribution: size at age offspring per female oxygen consumption per body mass distance between worm holes species counts per area in a given habitat

Distributions II Many other biological parameters follow a (negative) power function: number of sexual partners number of habitats number of food items Such distributions are scale-free networks

Scale-free Network Mediterranean

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