Who dominates whom in the ecosystem? Energy flow bottlenecks and cascading extinctions

Allesina, Stefano; Bodini, Antonio

doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2004.05.009

Cited by 127 publications

(100 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Due to constraints imposed by the medium itself, namely its limited rendering capacity in real-time, the population inhabiting the virtual space had to be small in number (less than 200 simultaneous individuals) 4 . Ecology tells us about the importance played by energetic pathways of the food web in the stability of the ecosystems [224,86,11]. However, on the other hand, it also tells us that such small populations are prone to stochastic extinctions [63], and that (large) systems with random correlations between species are typically unstable [155].…”

Section: Hypothesis #2mentioning

confidence: 99%

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On Computational Ecosystems in Media Arts

Antunes

2016

Leonardo

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DECLARATIONI hereby declare that I composed this thesis entirely myself and that it describes my own research.Rui Filipe Nicolau Lima Antunes 10th of October, 2013 2 This research is an exploration of issues surrounding the artistic production of Computational Ecosystems. A Computational Ecosystem is a system of agents designed to emulate, in the computer, biological systems where autonomous individuals are organized in a hierarchical food chain and interact by trading units of energy. This thesis maps out this field and examines the modes of production and functions of these systems. The central claim is focused on how the narratives normally associated with these systems and their functioning are two complementary, but separate entities. By virtue of considering these separately the computational ecosystem is argued to be an abstract generative engine for heterogeneity, spontaneity, and even novelty. It is contended that the set of methods of production developed by exploratory artists using these artefacts might be instrumentalized as generative methods for the animation of general purpose non-player characters in virtual worlds.

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Section: Hypothesis #2mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Patterns that persist by metabolism and reproduction are said to be alive. Life is, as such, a delicate balance of interdependent complex systems providing mutual feedback 11 . The whole of each structure is more than the component parts: a heart without a body will be lifeless, and the same will happen to a body without a heart.…”

Section: Life Formsmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Computational Ecosystems in Media Arts

Antunes

2016

Leonardo

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“…One such case is when the species lost is an energetic bottleneck constituting the only link to the primary resource base for many higher level consumers. Hence, even though species with few interactions often are least important for food web robustness, such species cannot be a priori dismissed without considering their precise trophic position in the food web (see also Allesina & Bodini 2004;Dunne et al 2009). …”

Section: Species Traits and Food Web Robustnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robustness to secondary extinctions: Comparing trait-based sequential deletions in static and dynamic food webs

Curtsdotter

Binzer²,

Brose³

et al. 2011

Basic and Applied Ecology

131

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Number of words in manuscript: 6768Number of words in abstract: 260 Number of words in title:14 Curtsdotter et al. Basic and Applied Ecology 2 AbstractThe loss of species from ecological communities can unleash a cascade of secondary extinctions, the risk and extent of which are likely to depend on the traits of the species that are lost from the community. To identify species traits that have the greatest impact on food web robustness to species loss we here subject allometrically scaled, dynamical food web models to several deletion sequences based on species' connectivity, generality, vulnerability or body mass. Further, to evaluate the relative importance of dynamical to topological effects we compare robustness between dynamical and purely topological models. This comparison reveals that the topological approach overestimates robustness in general and for certain sequences in particular. Top-down directed sequences have no or very low impact on robustness in topological analyses, while the dynamical analysis reveals that they may be as important as high-impact bottom-up directed sequences.Moreover, there are no deletion sequences that result, on average, in no or very few secondary extinctions in the dynamical approach. Instead, the least detrimental sequence in the dynamical approach yields an average robustness similar to the most detrimental (non-basal) deletion sequence in the topological approach. Hence, a topological analysis may lead to erroneous conclusions concerning both the relative and the absolute importance of different species traits for robustness.The dynamical sequential deletion analysis shows that food webs are least robust to the loss of species that have many trophic links or that occupy low trophic levels. In contrast to previous studies we can infer, albeit indirectly, that secondary extinctions were triggered by both bottom-up and topdown cascades.

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“…Node i is a dominator of node j if every path from the external environment to j contains i (Allesina and Bodini, 2004). …”

Section: M-reach (R2) Simply Measures the Number Of Nodes Reachable Wmentioning

confidence: 99%

The robustness of keystone indices in food webs

Fedor

Vasas

2009

Journal of Theoretical Biology

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Who dominates whom in the ecosystem? Energy flow bottlenecks and cascading extinctions

Cited by 127 publications

References 39 publications

On Computational Ecosystems in Media Arts

On Computational Ecosystems in Media Arts

Robustness to secondary extinctions: Comparing trait-based sequential deletions in static and dynamic food webs

The robustness of keystone indices in food webs

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