New publications
NEW STUDY: GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IS SHRINKING ANIMALS AND PLANTS
Society has long prioritized maximizing food production, which has transformed ecosystems by reducing species diversity and body size, leading to more uniform yet highly productive environments. The trade-off between productivity and stability is often overlooked in discussions about global food security, however, especially when it comes to the weakened stability of these ecosystems. By reviewing key studies, this recent study (carried out with the assistance of CEM Director Dr. Kevin McCann) highlights this trade-off and emphasizes the need to consider it in sustainable food system management. This research shows how human activities have rewired food webs thus destabilizing them, and suggests that promoting landscape diversity and preserving key food web structures are essential for sustainable food production.
For more information, see the research article at DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.107916
Media COVERAGE
Great lakes Basin and Inland Lakes
Hale, Kayla; Fernandes, Timothy; O'Connor, Reilly; Ward, Charlotte (2025). Managing for resilience through ecological structure: Examples of portfolio effects in the Great Lakes Basin. figshare. Journal contribution.
Marie K. Gutgesell, Matthew M. Guzzo, and Kevin S. McCann (2025). Agricultural land-use change seasonally rewires stream food webs: a case study from headwater streams in the Lake Erie watershed. FACETS. 10: 1-13.
Warne, C., Guzzo, M. M., Cazelles, K., Chu, C., Rooney, N., & McCann, K. S. (2024). Thermal tolerance and habitat preferences mediate how freshwater fish body sizes respond to warming. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 81(4): 488-496.*
Fernandes TJ, O'Connor R, McCann KS, Shuter BJ, McMeans BC. (2024). Ephemeral piscivory in a mesopredator sunfish: Implications for pond food webs. Ecology. 2024 Nov; 105(11):e4431.
Gutgesell, M., McMeans, B.C., Guzzo, M.M., de Groot, V., Fisk, A.T., Johnson, T.B. and McCann, K.S., (2022). Subsidy accessibility drives asymmetric food web responses. Ecology, 103(12), p.e3817.
O'Connor, R.F., McMeans, B.C., Rooney, N., Guzzo, M.M., Young, J.D. and McCann, K.S., (2022). Species portfolio effects dominate seasonal zooplankton stabilization within a large temperate lake. Ecology, pp.e3889-e3889.
Champagne, E.J., Guzzo, M.M., Gutgesell, M.K. and McCann, K.S., (2022). Riparian buffers maintain aquatic trophic structure in agricultural landscapes. Biology Letters, 18(3), pp.20210598-20210598.
Warne, C.P., McCann, K.S., Rooney, N., Cazelles, K. and Guzzo, M.M., (2020). Geography and Morphology Affect the Ice Duration Dynamics of Northern Hemisphere Lakes Worldwide. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(12), p.e87953.
* selected as Editor’s Choice
Global Sustainability
Singh, G. G., Sajid, Z., Khan, F., Mather, C., Bernhardt, J. R., & Frölicher, T. L. (2023). Rethinking disaster risk for ecological risk assessment. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 11, 1249567.
Donohue, I., Coscieme, L., Gellner, G., Yang, Q., Jackson, A. L., Kubiszewski, I., Costanza, R., & McCann, K. S. (2023). Accelerated economic recovery in countries powered by renewables. Ecological Economics, 212, 107916.
Moore, N.A., Morales-Castilla, I., Hargreaves, A.L. et al. (2023). Temperate species underfill their tropical thermal potentials on land. Nat Ecol Evol.
Bieg, Carling, Timothy J. Bartley, Kevin S. McCann, and Robert H. Hanner. (2022). Replicating nature's fabric: High information markets and the sustainability of global seafood. Food Webs 32: e00239.
Bieg, C., Vallès, H., Tewfik, A., Lapointe, B. & Mccann, K. (2022). Towards a multi-stressor theory for coral reefs in a changing world. 10.1101/2022.03.22.485402.
Cazelles, K., Zemlak, T.S., Gutgesell, M., Myles-Gonzalez, E., Hanner, R. and Shear McCann, K., (2021). Spatial fingerprinting: horizontal fusion of multi-dimensional bio-tracers as solution to global food provenance problems. Foods, 10(4), p.717.
Theory, Models & Management Tools
Wang, X., Braun, M., McGuigan, E., McCann, K.S., Hanner, R.H. and Fryxell, J.M. (2025). The effect of nutrient transport downstream on food web stability in an experimental freshwater meta-ecosystem. FACETS, 10, pp.1-15.
Matthew M. Guzzo, Reilly O'Connor, Lyle Novella-Talusan, Brandon Graham, Evan Versteeg, Bailey C. McMeans, Mark Ridgway, Kevin S. McCann, and Frédéric Laberge (2025). The influence of food web structure and foraging behaviour on visual system traits in a predatory freshwater fish. Canadian Journal of Zoology. 103: 1-10.
Forester, B.R., Cicchino, A.S., Shah, A.A., Mudd, A.B., Anderson, E.C., Bredeson, J.V., Crawford, A.J., Dunham, J.B., Ghalambor, C.K., Landguth, E.L., Murray, B.W., Rokhsar, D. and Funk, W.C. (2025). Population genomics reveals local adaptation related to temperature variation in two stream frog species: Implications for vulnerability to climate warming. Mol Ecol e17651.
Alyssa M. Andersen, Paul J. Blanchfield, Cecilia E. Heuvel, Kevin S. McCann, Bailey C. McMeans, Mark S. Ridgway, and Aaron T. Fisk. (2025). Influence of lake volume on food web metrics in a freshwater fish assemblage across a small range of ecosystem sizes. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 82: 1-14.
Jade C. Dawson, Matthew M. Guzzo, John M. Gunn, Erik J.S. Emilson, Kevin S. McCann, and Brie A. Edwards (2024). Stable isotope analysis provides novel insights for measuring lake ecosystem recovery following acidification. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences. 81(7): 904-918.
Griffith, J.E., Houghton, E., Slein, M.A., Fraser Franco, M., Chávez, J., Forsythe, A.B., Glynn, V.M., Katkov, E., Palmier, K.M., Sang, Z., Trejo-Pérez, R., Wiley, B., Sunday, J.M., & Bernhardt, J.R. (2024). Harnessing open science practices to teach ecology and evolutionary biology using interactive tutorials. Ecology and Evolution, 14, e11179.
Sunday, J. M., Bernhardt, J. R., Harley, C. D., & O'Connor, M. I. (2024). Temperature dependence of competitive ability is cold‐shifted compared to that of growth rate in marine phytoplankton. Ecology Letters, 27(1), e14337.
Gutgesell, M., McCann, K., O'Connor, R., Kc, K., Fraser, E.D., Moore, J.C., McMeans, B., Donohue, I., Bieg, C., Ward, C. and Pauli, B. (2024). The productivity-stability trade-off in global food systems. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 8(11):2135-2149.
Andersen, A.M., Blanchfield, P.J., Heuvel, C.E., McCann, K.S., McMeans, B.C., Ridgway, M.S. and Fisk, A.T., (2024). Influence of lake volume on food web metrics in a freshwater fish assemblage across a small range of ecosystem sizes. Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, 82, pp.1-14.
Hale, K. R. S., Curlis, J. D., Auteri, G. G., Bishop, S., French, R. L. K., Jones, L. E., Mills, K. L., Scholtens, B. G., Simons, M., Thompson, C., Tourville, J., & Valdovinos, F. S. (2024). A highly resolved network reveals the role of terrestrial herbivory in structuring aboveground food webs. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 379 (1909).
Sunday, J.M., Bernhardt, J.R., Harley, C.D.G. & O’Connor, M.I. (2023). Temperature dependence of competitive ability is cold-shifted compared to that of growth rate in marine phytoplankton. Ecology Letters, 00, 1–12.
Ward, C. A., Tunney, T. D., & McCann, K. S. (2023). Managing aquatic habitat structure for resilient trophic interactions. Ecological Applications, 10.1002/eap.2814.
Donohue, I., Coscieme, L., Gellner, G., Yang, Q., Jackson, A.L., Kubiszewski, I., Costanza, R., and McCann, K.S. (2023). Accelerated economic recovery in countries powered by renewables. Ecological Economics, 212, 107916.
Säterberg, T. and McCann, K., (2021). Detecting alternative attractors in ecosystem dynamics. Communications biology, 4(1), p.975.
McCann, K.S., Cazelles, K., Macdougall, A.S., Fussmann, G.F., Bieg, C., Cristescu, M., Fryxell, J.M., Gellner, G., Lapointe, B. and Gonzalez, A., (2021). Landscape modification and nutrient-driven instability at a distance. Ecology Letters, 24, pp.398-414.
McMeans, B.C., McCann, K.S., Guzzo, M.M., Bartley, T.J., Bieg, C., Blanchfield, P.J., Fernandes, T., Giacomini, H.C., Middel, T., Rennie, M.D. and Ridgway, M.S., (2020). Winter in water: differential responses and the maintenance of biodiversity. Ecology Letters, 23(6), pp.922-938.