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Quantitative Analysis of Ecological Networks

This book is about ecological networks, and networks in ecology include almost anything that can be represented by a set of points joined in pairs by lines or “edges” (Newman 2010). By choosing the right network characteristics to investigate, network analysis allows us to develop concepts and to test hypotheses about ecological systems and processes that we could not express or investigate otherwise. We will begin by suggesting how ecological questions and the quantitative analysis of the ecological networks are tied together. We cannot expect a simple one-to-one relationship between network structure or topological properties and network function and the related ecological processes, but we can provide some of the best matches. To illustrate the close connection between ecological questions and network analysis, Table 1.1 gives several examples of such questions and the network characteristics that might be used to help answer them. We could cite many more examples of ecological questions for ecological systems for which the network approach seems like the best approach for finding answers, but the preceding list provides a good sample. It is obvious, too, that several network properties and measures appear frequently in the list, for example: degree, centrality, modularity (and clusters), and connectivity. These concepts and their measures will be described in detail in the chapters that follow. More characteristics and more in-depth analysis will be required to answer these queries for ecological networks, but the intention is to indicate where our analysis should start. Greater detail on the recommended quantitative analysis will be provided in the chapters that follow.