Measuring nestedness: A comparative study of the performance of different metrics.

ABSTRACT: Nestedness is a property of interaction networks widely observed in natural mutualistic communities, among other systems. A perfectly nested network is characterized by the peculiarity that the interactions of any node form a subset of the interactions of all nodes with higher degree. Despite a widespread interest on this pattern, no general consensus exists on how to measure it. Instead, several nestedness metrics, based on different but not necessarily independent properties of the networks, coexist in the literature, blurring the comparison between ecosystems. In this work, we present a detailed critical study of the behavior of six nestedness metrics and the variants of two of them. In order to evaluate their performance, we compare the obtained values of the nestedness of a large set

SUBMITTER: Payrato-Borras C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7663079 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature