Abstract. All organisms are ultimately dependent on a large diversity of consumptive and non-consumptive interactions established with other organisms, forming an intricate web of interdependencies. In 1992, when 1700 concerned scientists issued the first “World Scientists' Warning to Humanity”, our understanding of such interaction networks was still in its infancy. By simultaneously considering the species (nodes) and the links that glue them together into functional communities, the study of modern food webs – or more generally ecological networks – has brought us closer to a predictive community ecology. Scientists have now observed, manipulated, and modelled the assembly and the collapse of food webs under various global change stressors and identified common patterns. Most stressors, such as increasing temperature, biological invasions, biodiversity loss, habitat fragmentation, over-exploitation, have been shown to simplify food webs by concentrating energy flow along fewer pathways, threatening long-term community persistence. More worryingly, it has been shown that communities can abruptly change from highly diverse to simplified stable states with little or no warning. Altogether, evidence shows that apart from the challenge of tackling climate change and hampering the extinction of threatened species, we need urgent action to tackle large-scale biological change and specifically to protect food webs, as we are under the risk of pushing entire ecosystems outside their safe zones. At the same time, we need to gain a better understanding of the global-scale synergies and trade-offs between climate change and biological change. Here we highlight the most pressing challenges for the conservation of natural food webs and recent advances that might help us addressing such challenges.

中文翻译：

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科学家对濒危食物网的警告

摘要。所有生物体最终都依赖于与其他生物体建立的大量消耗性和非消耗性相互作用，从而形成复杂的相互依赖网络。1992 年，当 1700 名有关科学家发布第一个“世界科学家对人类的警告”时，我们对这种相互作用网络的认识还处于起步阶段。通过同时考虑物种（节点）和将它们粘合成功能群落的联系，对现代食物网——或者更普遍的生态网络——的研究使我们更接近预测性群落生态学。科学家们现在已经观察、操纵和模拟了各种全球变化压力源下食物网的组装和崩溃，并确定了常见的模式。大多数压力源，如温度升高、生物入侵、生物多样性丧失、栖息地破碎化、过度开发已被证明通过将能量流集中在较少的路径上来简化食物网，威胁到社区的长期持久性。更令人担忧的是，已经表明，社区可以在很少或没有警告的情况下突然从高度多样化的状态转变为简单的稳定状态。总而言之，证据表明，除了应对气候变化和阻止受威胁物种灭绝的挑战外，我们还需要采取紧急行动来应对大规模的生物变化，特别是保护食物网，因为我们面临着将整个生态系统推向外部的风险他们的安全区。同时，我们需要更好地了解气候变化与生物变化之间的全球规模协同作用和权衡。