The species–area relationship (SAR) is one of the most well‐established scaling patterns in ecology. Its implications for understanding how communities change across spatial gradients are numerous, including the effects of habitat loss on biodiversity. However, ecological communities are not mere collections of species. They are the result of interactions between these species forming complex networks that tie them together. Should we aim to grasp the spatial scaling of biodiversity as a whole, it is fundamental to understand the changes in the structure of interaction networks with area. In spite of a few empirical and theoretical studies that address this challenge, we still do not know much about how network structure changes with area, or what are the main environmental drivers of these changes. Here, using the meta‐network of potential interactions between all terrestrial vertebrates in Europe (1140 species and 67 201 feeding interactions), we analysed network–area relationships (NARs) that summarize how network properties scale with area. We do this across ten biogeographical regions, which differ in environmental characteristics. We found that the spatial scaling of network complexity strongly varied across biogeographical regions. However, once the variation in SARs was accounted for, differences in the shape of NARs vanished. On the other hand, the proportion of species across trophic levels remained remarkably constant across biogeographical regions and spatial scales, despite the great variation in species richness. Spatial variation in mean annual temperature and habitat clustering were the main environmental determinants of the shape of both SARs and NARs across Europe. Our results suggest new avenues in the exploration of the effects of environmental factors on the spatial scaling of biodiversity. We argue that NARs can provide new insights to analyse and understand ecological communities.

中文翻译：

---

欧洲生物地理区域食物网结构的空间尺度

物种-面积关系 (SAR) 是生态学中最成熟的尺度模式之一。它对理解群落如何跨空间梯度变化的影响很多，包括栖息地丧失对生物多样性的影响。然而，生态群落不仅仅是物种的集合。它们是这些物种之间相互作用的结果，形成了将它们联系在一起的复杂网络。如果我们的目标是从整体上把握生物多样性的空间尺度，那么了解与区域相互作用的网络结构的变化是至关重要的。尽管针对这一挑战进行了一些实证和理论研究，但我们仍然不太了解网络结构如何随面积变化，或者这些变化的主要环境驱动因素是什么。这里，使用欧洲所有陆生脊椎动物之间潜在相互作用的元网络（1140 种和 67201 种进食相互作用），我们分析了网络-区域关系 (NAR)，该关系总结了网络属性如何随区域缩放。我们在环境特征不同的十个生物地理区域进行这项工作。我们发现网络复杂性的空间尺度在不同生物地理区域之间差异很大。然而，一旦考虑到 SAR 的变化，NAR 形状的差异就消失了。另一方面，尽管物种丰富度存在很大差异，但跨营养级的物种比例在生物地理区域和空间尺度上保持非常稳定。年平均温度和栖息地聚集的空间变化是整个欧洲 SAR 和 NAR 形状的主要环境决定因素。我们的结果为探索环境因素对生物多样性空间尺度的影响提供了新途径。我们认为 NAR 可以提供新的见解来分析和理解生态群落。