Efforts to model marine food-webs are generally undertaken by small teams working separately on specific regions (<10⁶ km²) and making independent decisions about how to deal with data gaps and uncertainties. Differences in these largely arbitrary decisions (which we call ‘model personality’) can potentially obscure true differences between regional food-webs or lead to spurious differences. Here we explore the influence of model personality on a comparison of four Southern Ocean regional food-web models. We construct alternative model versions which sequentially remove aspects of personality (alternative model ‘currencies’, schemes for aggregating organisms into functional groups, and energetic parameter values). These alternative versions preserve regional differences in biomass and feeding relationships. Variation in a set of model metrics that are insensitive to absolute biomass and production identifies multiple regional contrasts, a subset of which are robust to differences in model personality. These contrasts imply real differences in ecosystem structure which, in conjunction with differences in primary production and consumer biomass (spanning two and four orders of magnitude respectively), underpin differences in function. Existing regional models are therefore a useful resource for comparing ecosystem structure, function and response to change if comparative studies assess and report the influence of model personality.

通常由小团队在特定区域（<10 ⁶  km ²），并就如何处理数据缺口和不确定性做出独立决策。这些很大程度上是武断的决定（我们称为“模范人格”）中的差异可能会掩盖区域食物网之间的真实差异，或导致虚假差异。在这里，我们探讨了模型人格对四个南大洋区域食物网模型的比较的影响。我们构建了替代模型版本，这些模型顺序删除了性格方面（替代模型“货币”，将生物聚集到功能组中的方案以及充满活力的参数值）。这些替代版本保留了生物量和进料关系的区域差异。对绝对生物量和产量不敏感的一组模型指标的变化确定了多个区域差异，其中的一部分对模型人格差异具有鲁棒性。这些对比暗示了生态系统结构的真正差异，再加上初级生产和消费者生物量的差异（分别跨越两个和四个数量级），支撑了功能上的差异。因此，如果比较研究评估并报告了模型个性的影响，则现有的区域模型是比较生态系统结构，功能和对变化的响应的有用资源。