Niche Dimension as an Emergent Property of Food-Web Structure

Abstract

Ecosystems are often described as food webs: networks in which nodes are species and links stand for predation. The research in the field of these ecological networks is becoming more and more relevant given the increasing pressure the ecosystems are facing, which makes the study of their topology specially interesting due to its interconnection with the dynamical processes taking place in it. The concept of the ecological niche of a species has been discussed for a long time. The term was originally used to refer to a species habitat or ecological role. It was then re-defined by Hutchinson as a position in a multi-dimensional hyperspace—each dimension being some biologically relevant magnitude [2].