The architecture of antagonistic networks: Node degree distribution, compartmentalization and nestedness
Date
2015-12-01
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
International Academy of Ecology and Environmental Sciences
Abstract
Describing complex ecosystems as networks of interacting components has proved fruitful – revealing many distinctive patterns and dynamics of ecological systems. Of these patterns, three have often been brought up in
literature, including species degree distribution, compartmentalization and nestedness, due largely to their
implications for the functionality and stability of communities. Here, using 61 empirical antagonistic networks,
we aim to settle the inconsistency in literature by (i) fitting their node degree distributions to five different
parametric models and identifying the one fits the best, (ii) measuring the levels of nestedness and compartmentalization of these 61 networks and testing their significance using different null models, and (iii)
exploring how network connectance affects these three network architecture metrics. This research showed that most antagonistic networks do not display power law degree distributions and that resource species are
generally uniformly distributed. We also clearly showed that the conclusion of whether a network is significantly compartmentalized or nested depends largely on the null model used.
Description
Keywords
ecological network, modularity, null model, connectance
Citation
Nuwagaba, S. & Hui, C. (2015) The architecture of antagonistic networks: Node degree distribution, compartmentalization and nestedness. Computational Ecology and Software, 5: 317-327.