Interspecific competition underlying mutualistic networks

Details Interspecific competition underlying mutualistic networks Interspecific competition underlying mutualistic networks

2011-10-13

arxiv.org/abs/1110.2834v2

Physical Review Letters 108, 108701 (2012)

Biology

Quantitative Biology

Populations and Evolution

5 pages, 3 figures, accepted version in PRL

Scientific paper

10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.108701

The architecture of bipartite networks linking two classes of constituents is affected by the interactions within each class. For the bipartite networks representing the mutualistic relationship between pollinating animals and plants, it has been known that their degree distributions are broad but often deviate from power-law form, more significantly for plants than animals. Here we consider a model for the evolution of the mutualistic networks and find that their topology is strongly dependent on the asymmetry and non-linearity of the preferential selection of mutualistic partners. Real-world mutualistic networks analyzed in the framework of the model show that a new animal species determines its partners not only by their attractiveness but also as a result of the competition with pre-existing animals, which leads to the stretched-exponential degree distributions of plant species.

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