Organisms interact across time and space; collectively, these interactions constitute webs that drive energy and material cycles. Classical ecological studies have tested the hypothesis that complex food webs are less stable in closed systems and have thus focused mainly on internal, local drivers of interspecific interactions in food webs. Recently, theories relating to food webs and ecosystems have been expanded to larger spatial scales through the concept of metacommunities (i.e., metawebs and metaecosystems), whose properties are driven by climatic conditions. However, these concepts have been limited to short‐term phenomena observable on ecological time scales, while long‐term historical processes have rarely been considered. In addition, the components of food webs have not been considered as determinants of food web persistence, even though species' persistence is determined by factors other than interspecific interactions within local food webs. Here, I emphasized the potential utility of intraspecific genetic diversity of hub species as a metric for evaluating the long‐term persistence of local food webs. I also proposed a method for calculating this new metric, expressed as the sum of all metaweb level centrality and intraspecific genetic diversity values for each species. Furthermore, I discussed hypothetical patterns in food web properties as determined from both food web structure and intraspecific genetic structure along geographical and climatic gradients; these patterns have yet to be verified empirically. Finally, I summarized recent developments in molecular methods for collecting genetic data, which may support the empirical study of the concepts presented here.

中文翻译：

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想法文件：基于中心物种种群内种内遗传多样性阐明食物网的长期特性

生物跨越时空相互作用；这些相互作用共同构成了驱动能量和材料循环的纤维网。古典生态学研究验证了以下假设：复杂的食物网在封闭系统中不稳定，因此主要关注食物网中种间相互作用的内部，局部驱动因素。近年来，与食物网和生态系统有关的理论已通过元社区（即元网络和元生态系统）的概念扩展到更大的空间尺度，元社区的特性是由气候条件决定的。但是，这些概念仅限于在生态时间尺度上可观察到的短期现象，而很少考虑长期历史过程。此外，食物网的组成部分还没有被视为食物网持久性的决定因素，即使物种的持久性是由当地食物网内种间相互作用以外的因素决定的。在这里，我强调了枢纽物种种内遗传多样性作为评估当地食物网的长期持久性的一项指标的潜在用途。我还提出了一种计算此新指标的方法，表示为每个物种的所有metaweb级中心性和种内遗传多样性值的总和。此外，我还讨论了根据地理和气候梯度从食物网结构和种内遗传结构确定的食物网属性的假想模式。这些模式还有待实证。最后，我总结了分子方法用于收集遗传数据的最新进展，