Related papers: Complexity and fragility in ecological networks
Ecological systems show a variety of characteristic patterns of biodiversity in space and time. It is a challenge for theory to find models that can reproduce and explain the observed patterns. Since the advent of island biogeography these…
Real-world complex systems such as ecological communities and neuron networks are essential parts of our everyday lives. These systems are composed of units which interact through intricate networks. The ability to predict sudden changes in…
An important challenge in theoretical ecology is to find good, coarse-grained representations of complex food webs. Here we use the approach of generalized modeling to show that it may be possible to formulate a coarse-graining algorithm…
Food webs have been found to exhibit remarkable motif profiles, patterns in the relative prevalences of all possible three-species sub-graphs, and this has been related to ecosystem properties such as stability and robustness. Analysing 46…
We develop a set of equations to describe the population dynamics of many interacting species in food webs. Predator-prey interactions are non-linear, and are based on ratio-dependent functional responses. The equations account for…
We study the robustness of complex networks subject to edge removal. Several network models and removing strategies are simulated. Rather than the existence of the giant component, we use total connectedness as the criterion of breakdown.…
We investigate the relationship between the nested organization of mutualistic systems and their robustness against the extinction of species. We establish that a nested pattern of contacts is the best possible one as far as robustness is…
Ecological networks are theoretical abstractions that represent ecological communities. These networks are usually defined as static entities, in which the occurrence of a particular interaction between species is considered fixed despite…
Considering agricultural landscapes as networks can provide information about spatial connectivity relevant for a wide range of applications including pollination, pest management, and ecology. Global agricultural networks are…
Social networks transmitting covert or sensitive information cannot use all ties for this purpose. Rather, they can only use a subset of ties that are strong enough to be ``trusted''. In this paper we consider transitivity as evidence of…
Recent technological advances and long-term data studies provide interaction data that can be modelled through dynamic networks, i.e a sequence of different snapshots of an evolving ecological network. Most often time is the parameter along…
We report the results of carrying out a large number of simulations on a coevolutionary model of multispecies communities. A wide range of parameter values were investigated which allowed a rather complete picture of the change in behaviour…
Uncovering structural properties of ecological networks is a crucial starting point of studying the system's stability in response to various types of perturbations. We analyze pollination and seed disposal networks, which are…
A theory of relative species abundance on sparsely-connected networks is presented by investigating the replicator dynamics with symmetric interactions. Sparseness of a network involves difficulty in analyzing the fixed points of the…
Complex networks are ubiquitous: a cell, the human brain, a group of people and the Internet are all examples of interconnected many-body systems characterized by macroscopic properties that cannot be trivially deduced from those of their…
We use a generalised version of the individual-based Tangled Nature model of evolutionary ecology to study the relationship between ecosystem structure and evolutionary history. Our evolved model ecosystems typically exhibit interaction…
Dynamics in biological networks are in general robust against several perturbations. We investigate a coupled map network as a model motivated by gene regulatory networks and design systems which are robust against phenotypic perturbations…
Communication networks are vulnerable to natural disasters, such as earthquakes or floods, as well as to physical attacks, such as an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. Such real-world events happen at specific geographical locations and…
We introduce the concept of natural connectivity as a robustness measure of complex networks. The natural connectivity has a clear physical meaning and a simple mathematical formulation. It characterizes the redundancy of alternative paths…
Dispersal networks critically shape the fate of ecological communities, yet the mechanisms linking connectivity and persistence remain poorly understood. We show that an interplay between asymmetric dispersal and asynchronous dynamics…