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Ecological networks are theoretical abstractions that represent ecologicalcommunities. These networks are usually defined as static entities, in whichthe occurrence of a particular interaction between species is considered fixeddespite the intrinsic dynamics of ecological systems. However, empiricalanalysis of the temporal variation of trophic interactions is constrained bythe lack of data with high spatial, temporal, and taxonomic resolution. Here,we evaluate the spatiotemporal variability of multiple consumer-resourceinteractions of large marine networks. The tropic interactions of all of theanalyzed networks had low temporal persistence, which was well described by acommon exponential decay in the rank-frequency relationship ofconsumer-resource interactions. This common pattern of low temporal persistencewas evident despite the dissimilarities of environmental conditions amongsites. Between-site rank correlations of frequency of occurrence ofinteractions ranged from 0.59 to 0.73. After removing the interactions with<50% frequency, the between-site correlations decreased to values between 0.60and 0.28, indicating that low-frequency interactions accounted for the apparentsimilarities between sites. Our results showed that the communities studiedwere characterized by few persistent interactions and a large number oftransient trophic interactions. We suggest that consumer-resource temporalasynchrony in addition to varying local environmental conditions andopportunistic foraging could be among the mechanisms generating the observedrank-frequency relationship of trophic interactions. Therefore, our resultsquestion the analysis of ecological communities as static and persistentnatural entities and stress the need for strengthening the analysis of temporalvariability in ecological networks and long-term studies.

High temporal variability in the occurrence of consumer-resource interactions in ecological networks