New publications
NEW STUDY: GLOBAL FOOD PRODUCTION IS SHRINKING ANIMALS AND PLANTS
For centuries, society has prioritized maximizing food production, transforming ecosystems by reducing species diversity and body size into more uniform yet productive environments. The trade-off between productivity and stability is often overlooked in global food security discussions, despite weakened ecosystem resilience. Reviewing key studies, this research (with input from CEM Director Dr. Kevin McCann) highlights how human activities have rewired and destabilized food webs, stressing the need to preserve landscape diversity and key food web structures for sustainable food production.
For more information, see the research article at DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2023.107916
Media COVERAGE
2025
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.
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.
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.
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.
Stark, K. A., Clegg, T., Bernhardt, J. R., Grainger, T. N., Kempes, C. P., Savage, V., O’Connor, M. I., & Pawar, S. (2025). Toward a more dynamic metabolic theory of ecology to predict climate change effects on biological systems. The American Naturalist, 205(3), 285–305.
Stemkovski, M., Bernhardt, J. R., Blonder, B. W., Bradford, J. B., Clark-Wolf, K., Dee, L. E., Evans, M. E. K., Iglesias, V., Johnson, L. C., Lynch, A. J., Malone, S. L., Osborne, B. B., Pastore, M. A., Paterson, M., Pinsky, M. L., Rollinson, C. R., Selmoni, O., Venkiteswaran, J. J., … Adler, P. B. (2025). Ecological acclimation: A framework to integrate fast and slow responses to climate change. Functional Ecology, 00, 1–17.
Ward, C. A., Tunney, T. D., Donohue, I., Bieg, C., Hale, K. R. S., McMeans, B. C., Moore, J. C., & McCann, K. S. (2025). Global change asymmetrically rewires ecosystems. Ecology Letters, 28: e70174.
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.
2024
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.*
* selected as Editor’s Choice
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.
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.
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.
2023
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.
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.
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.
2022
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.
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.
2021
2020
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.
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.