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General network metrics

Table 1: Results from general network metrics of the food web of the Weddell Sea, both including estimated invasive species and without.

The two data sets, the one without the invasive species and the one with do not differ a lot comparing the results from the general network analyses (Table 1).
 

Table 2: The invasive species that is thought to invade the Weddell Sea food web and in this study was added to the food web, and their number of prey and predator species. The first six represent the crab species and the rest represent the shark species.

 

We looked at the position of the invasive species in the different trait distributions to see if they distinguished from the native species. The invasive species were found in certain areas and categories of the traits, but their traits and combination of them were not unique compared with the native species (Figure 1 to 3). Looking at the interactions, the invasive species all had large numbers of prey species and low or non-existing number of predators (Table 2). Their number of feeding interactions and prey species were for a major ity of the invasive species above the average numbers, and their number of predators were below (Table 1).
 

Figure 1: Distribution of the species in the Weddell Sea food web according to their body weight, where A) shows the food web without estimated invasive species and B) the food web with. The body weights were transformed by the natural logarithm to more easily display the distribution, due to that the food web contains very large and very small organisms. The red marking in the distribution represent the area where the body weight of the invasive crabs is located, and the blue marking represent where the body weight of the invasive sharks is located.

The distribution of the species logged body weight showed a high frequencies around zero and then it rapidly decreases on both sides (Figure 1). The invasive species are identified among the heavier organisms in the distribution.

Figure 2: Distribution of the species in the Weddell Sea food web according to these traits; Metabolic category, Feeding type and Feeding mode. The dark grey parts of the bars represent the native species in the web, and the light grey represent the estimated invasive species.

 

Looking at the categorical traits the invasive species were located as ectotherm vertebrates (the invasive shark species) and invertebrates (the invasive crab species) when it came to their metabolic category. All invasive species had carnivore as their feeding type, and they were identified as predators (the sharks) and predators/scavengers (the crabs) as their feeding mode (Figure 2).
 

Figure 3: Distribution of the species in the Weddell Sea food web according to these traits; Movement type and (Feeding) Environment of the species in the Weddell Sea food web. The dark grey parts of the bars represent the native species in the web, and the light grey represent the estimated invasive species.

 

In the distribution of the different movement types the invasive species were located as swimming (the sharks) and walking (the crabs). For the feeding environment they were located to be in the benthic, benthopelagic and pelagic environment to feed (Figure 3).
 

Centrality metrics

Figure 4: The 25 species with highest closeness centrality in the Weddell Sea food web. The plot to the left with dark grey bars represent the ranking without the invasive species, and the plot to the right with light grey bars represent the ranking with the invasive species included in the food web. The species names with an asterisk are the invasive species.

The result from the closeness analysis without adding the invasive species to the food web showed that all the species had quite similar centrality values. There were only small shifts that determined the ranking of the species, except for one specie in the top, Orcinus orca (Figure 4). Due to this small or nonexiting change in the ranking values, several species had the same rank of closeness centrality. When the invasive species were added to the food web, all except one of them ended up in the top of the ranking scale. However, the small or non-existing changes in ranking values did not change a lot when the invasive species were added, which makes it difficult to determine the actual scores of all species since several have the same values or just very small changes compared with the one above or below.
 

Figure 5: The 25 species with highest betweenness centrality in the Weddell Sea food web, where the invasive species were included. The dark grey bars represent the centrality values that the native species have when the invasive species are not included, and the white bars overlapping the grey represent the centrality values when the invasive species are included in the food web.

 

The result from the betweenness centrality did not show any significant differences between the food web including the invasive species and the one without them (Figure 5). All invasive species got a centrality value of zero and their presences didn’t change the ranking of the other species in the food web in any notable way.
 

Both the PageRank analysis of the food web including the invasive species and the one without them had small differences in the PageRank values between species in the middle of the ranking, that increases toward the top and the bottom of the ranking. Comparing the two PageRank analyses from the food web with the invasive species and the one without them showed only small changes in the PageRank values. All PageRank values decreased
slightly when the invasive species were added to the food web, but the ranking order still remained almost intact. All invasive species that were added to the food web ended up among the 65 lowest ranked species, where all the shark species had the lowest PageRank values off all species.
 

Figure 6: The 25 species with highest PageRank centrality in the Weddell Sea food web, where the invasive species were included. The dark grey bars represent the centrality values that the native species have when the invasive species are not included, and the white bars that overlap the grey bars represent the centrality values when the invasive species are included in the food web. The species names with an asterisk are the invasive species.
Figure 7: Sensitivity analysis for the Weddell Sea food web including the invasive species, where 10 % of the interactions were randomly removed. The black dots represent the original PageRank value, when no interactions were removed. The figure shows the 19 species with the originally highest ranked PageRank values.

 

Three sensitivity analyses was performed to make sure the results from the PageRank analysis of the food web where the invasive species were included, did not depend on the estimation of the invasive species and their estimated interactions. The results showed that the result from the PageRank analysis were stable and not affected by the estimation of the new feeding interactions (Figure 7). They showed similar results of the species ranking compared with the original result where no species interaction had been randomly removed. The result from the original PageRank analysis overlap with the result from the different sensitivity analyses where the frequency were at its highest (Figure 7).
 


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Last updated: 10/18/20