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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Ranking species in complex ecosystems through nestedness maximization
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Manuel Mariani
  • Dario Mazzilli
  • Aurelio Patelli
  • Dries Sels
  • Flaviano Morone
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • German
Journal Title Communications Physics
Publisher Nature Publishing Group
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 2399-3650
Volume 7
Number 102
Page Range online
Date 2024
Abstract Text Identifying the rank of species in a complex ecosystem is a difficult task, since the rank of each species invariably depends on the interactions stipulated with other species through the adjacency matrix of the network. A common ranking method in economic and ecological networks is to sort the nodes such that the layout of the reordered adjacency matrix looks maximally nested with all nonzero entries packed in the upper left corner, called Nestedness Maximization Problem (NMP). Here we solve this problem by defining a suitable cost-energy function for the NMP which reveals the equivalence between the NMP and the Quadratic Assignment Problem, one of the most important combinatorial optimization problems, and use statistical physics techniques to derive a set of self-consistent equationswhose fixed point represents the optimal nodes’ rankings in an arbitrary bipartite mutualistic network. Concurrently, we present an efficient algorithm to solve the NMP that outperforms state-ofthe- art network-based metrics and genetic algorithms. Eventually, our theoretical framework may be easily generalized to study the relationship between ranking and network structure beyond pairwise interactions, e.g. in higher-order networks.
Free access at DOI
Digital Object Identifier 10.1038/s42005-024-01588-8
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