A unifying approach for food webs, phylogeny, social networks, and statistics.

ABSTRACT: A food web consists of nodes, each consisting of one or more species. The role of each node as predator or prey determines the trophic relations that weave the web. Much effort in trophic food web research is given to understand the connectivity structure, or the nature and degree of dependence among nodes. Social network analysis (SNA) techniques--quantitative methods commonly used in the social sciences to understand network relational structure--have been used for this purpose, although postanalysis effort or biological theory is still required to determine what natural factors contribute to the feeding behavior. Thus, a conventional SNA alone provides limited insight into trophic structure. Here we show that by using novel statistical modeling methodologies to express network links as

SUBMITTER: Chiu GS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3179048 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature