Figure 1
Evolution of three food webs using different assembly rules. All main panels show decay rates of all species present plotted against invasion attempts, that is, evolutionary steps. The decay rates are plotted as \(\Delta \alpha \equiv \alpha - \alpha _{min}\), where \(\alpha _{min}\) denotes the lower limit on decay rates (compare: Table 1). The thin red line highlights the currently lowest producer decay rate. Grey symbols denote producers, yellow and magenta symbols denote consumers of one or two resources, respectively. Cyan symbols denote omnivores. (a) Food webs where only one resource per consumer is allowed, yielding a treelike food web without loops. (b) Consumers can have either one or two resources at the same trophic level. (c) Consumers are allowed one or two resources at any trophic level \(l\ge 1\). Note that both axes use logarithmic scaling. Insets: Normalised histograms of species richness, using all data. Note the logarithmic vertical axis scaling.
