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Abstract. Recent meta-analyses suggest that microzooplankton biomass density scales linearly with phytoplankton biomass density, suggesting a simple, general rule may underpin trophic structure in the global ocean. Here, we use a set of highly simplified food web models, solved within a global general circulation model, to examine the core drivers of linear predator–prey scaling. We examine a parallel food chain model which assumes microzooplankton grazers feed on distinct size classes of phytoplankton and contrast this with a diamond food web model allowing shared microzooplankton predation on a range of phytoplankton size classes. Within these two contrasting model structures, we also evaluate the impact of fixed vs. density-dependent microzooplankton mortality. We find that the observed relationship between microzooplankton predators and prey can be reproduced with density-dependent mortality on the highest predator, regardless of choices made about plankton food web structure. Our findings point to the importance of parameterizing mortality of the highest predator for simple food web models to recapitulate trophic structure in the global ocean.

It has been proposed that microbial predator and prey densities are related through sublinear power laws. We revisited previously published biomass and abundance data and fitted Power‐law Biomass Scaling Relationships (PBSRs) between marine microzooplankton predators (Z) and phytoplankton prey (P), and marine viral predators (V) and bacterial prey (B). We analysed them assuming an error structure given by Type II regression models which, in contrast to the conventional Type I regression model, accounts for errors in both the independent and the dependent variables. We found that the data support linear relationships, in contrast to the sublinear relationships reported by previous authors. The scaling exponent yields an expected value of 1 with some spread in different datasets that was well‐described with a Gaussian distribution. Our results suggest that the ratiosZ/P, andV/Bare on average invariant, in contrast to the hypothesis that they systematically decrease with increasingPand B, respectively, as previously thought.