Ecological networks: Pursuing the shortest path, however narrow and crooked.

ABSTRACT: Representing data as networks cuts across all sub-disciplines in ecology and evolutionary biology. Besides providing a compact representation of the interconnections between agents, network analysis allows the identification of especially important nodes, according to various metrics that often rely on the calculation of the shortest paths connecting any two nodes. While the interpretation of a shortest paths is straightforward in binary, unweighted networks, whenever weights are reported, the calculation could yield unexpected results. We analyzed 129 studies of ecological networks published in the last decade that use shortest paths, and discovered a methodological inaccuracy related to the edge weights used to calculate shortest paths (and related centrality measures), particularly in i

SUBMITTER: Costa A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6883044 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature