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Dynamics On and Of Complex Networks pp 57–72Cite as

Ecological Networks: Structure, Interaction Strength, and Stability

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The fundamental building blocks of any ecosystem, the food webs, which are assemblages of species through various interconnections, provide a central concept in ecology. The study of a food web allows abstractions of the complexity and interconnectedness of natural communities that transcend the specific details of the underlying systems. For example, Fig. 1 shows a typical food web, where the species are connected through their feeding relationships. The top predator, Heliaster (starfish) feeds on many gastropods like Hexaplex, Morula, Cantharus, etc., some of whom predate on each other [129]. Interactions between species in a food web can be of many types, such as predation, competition, mutualism, commensalism, and ammensalism (see Section 1.1, Fig. 2).

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to the anonymous referees for constructive, critical comments, and to the Department of Science and Technology, India, for financial support.

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  1. Mathematical Modelling and Computational Biology Group, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, CSIR, 500007, Hyderabad, India

    Samit Bhattacharyya & Somdatta Sinha

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    Bhattacharyya, S., Sinha, S. (2009). Ecological Networks: Structure, Interaction Strength, and Stability. In: Ganguly, N., Deutsch, A., Mukherjee, A. (eds) Dynamics On and Of Complex Networks. Modeling and Simulation in Science, Engineering and Technology. Birkhäuser Boston. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-8176-4751-3_4

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