Behaviour moderates the impacts of food-web structure on species coexistence

How species coexistence (mathematical 'feasibility') in food webs emerges from species' trophic interactions remains a long-standing open question. Here we investigate how structure (network topology and body-size structure) and behaviour (foraging strategy and spatial dimensionality of interactions) interactively affect feasibility in food webs. Metabolically-constrained modelling of food-web dynamics based on whole-organism consumption revealed that feasibility is promoted in systems dominated by large-eat-small foraging (consumers eating smaller resources) whenever (1) many top consumers are present, (2) grazing or sit-and-wait foraging strategies are common, and (3) species engage in two-dimensional interactions. Congruently, the first two conditions were associated with dominance of large-eat-small foraging in 74 well-resolved (primarily aquatic) real-world food webs. Our findings provide a new, mechanistic understanding of how behavioural properties can modulate the effects of structural properties on species coexistence in food webs, and suggest that 'being feasible' constrains the spectra of behavioural and structural properties seen in natural food webs.