Ecological networks balance connectivity with flexibility to perturbations
Food webs become progressively sparser as species richness increases, yet the number of interactions grows faster than linearly, placing communities between the limiting expectations of constant degree and constant connectance. Similar intermediate link--species scaling has also been documented in other ecological interaction networks, but whether contrasting interaction types share a common architectural regime, and what general principle could generate it, remain unresolved. Here, we analyse 1,569 mutualistic and antagonistic networks of different types and show that they broadly converge on the same scaling. We interpret this pattern using a thermodynamic framework in which increasing connectivity enhances perturbation propagation while reducing the diversity of independent response modes of the system. Randomly adding or removing interactions generally lowers thermodynamic efficiency, while an analytical stationary condition yields a result closely matching the empirical exponent. These results support a propagation--response-diversity trade-off as a plausible systems-level principle underlying how ecological network complexity grows with diversity.
This IFISC Seminar will be broadcasted in the following zoom link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89466064429?pwd=po9p99eAEYVPaNI8xIIGoOIz0hOqaF.1
Coffee and cookies will be served 15 minutes before the start of the seminar
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