Potter Cove Food Webs and Climatic Change

LEONARDO ARIEL SARAVIA

Cambridge

Workshop; First SOOS Western Antarctic Peninsula Meeeting; 2017

Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research

We present the food web of Potter Cove that was build based on more than 20 years of investigations including many international collaborations. The food web resumed many of these studies showing an integrated assessment of the ecosystem. We also build a dynamic food web model based on stochastic metaweb approach. The model showed that climatic change can alter the parameters of species that could produce marked changes in the dynamics, these are the key species. These dynamical changes persist over extended periods of time resulting in a non-equilibrium behaviour. This emphasises the need for permanent studies that follow the changes in the key species continuously over time.