";s:4:"text";s:1504:"Classical macrodescriptors and recent network metrics are evaluated for each marine food web example. This chapter examines recent case studies of marine food webs to evaluate the applicability of food web theories for the marine environment. Food webs are highly complex ecological networks, dynamic in both space and time. Another name for food web is consumer-resource system . Here we show that metacommunity theory can explain the emergence of species-rich food webs with complex network topologies. Early analyses of topological properties of empirical food webs emerged from research on ecological diversity–stability relationships (e.g., refs. Metacommunity models are now at the core of unified theories of biodiversity, but to date they have not addressed food web complexity. Food-web theory can be a powerful guide to the management of complex ecosystems. Food web ecology is a constantly evolving subdiscipline of ecology, and it is important to appreciate the diversity of approaches to the study of food webs (Schoener 1989; … However, we show that indices of species importance common in food-web and network theory … A food web (or food cycle) is the natural interconnection of food chains and a graphical representation (usually an image) of what-eats-what in an ecological community.