Correlation between interaction strengths drives stability in large ecological networks

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Category

General Reference

author-supplied keywords

Complexity

Food webs

Pairwise correlation

Population dynamics

Stability

keywords

authors

Si Tang

Samraat Pawar

Stefano Allesina

title

Correlation between interaction strengths drives stability in large ecological networks

type

generic

year

2014

source

Ecology Letters

pages

1094-1100

volume

17

issue

9

publisher

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

link

https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/84f95ce6-2b95-3e18-8d4f-36b16efb417b/(0)

Abstract

Food webs have markedly non-random network structure. Ecologists maintain that this non-random structure is key for stability, since large random ecological networks would invariably be unstable and thus should not be observed empirically. Here we show that a simple yet overlooked feature of natural food webs, the correlation between the effects of consumers on resources and those of resources on consumers, substantially accounts for their stability. Remarkably, random food webs built by preserving just the distribution and correlation of interaction strengths have stability properties similar to those of the corresponding empirical systems. Surprisingly, we find that the effect of topological network structure on stability, which has been the focus of countless studies, is small compared to that of correlation. Hence, any study of the effects of network structure on stability must first take into account the distribution and correlation of interaction strengths.

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Citation count From Scopus. Refreshed every 5 days.

92

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Identifiers

• doi: 10.1111/ele.12312 (Google search)
• issn: 14610248
• sgr: 84905256618
• isbn: 1461-0248
• pmid: 24946877
• scopus: 2-s2.0-84905256618
• pui: 53203057

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