Food web networks: Scaling relation revisited

摘要: Abstract Food webs seem to possess scale invariant attributes among which efficiency has been recently included. Considering food as transportation networks it shown that minimum spanning trees, topologies minimize cost for delivering medium, satisfy a universal scaling relation. It is not clear, however, whether resource distribution follows the criterion of cost, because longer, less efficient routes are used well. Because this, instead focusing on length trees (MLST) we consider directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) better descriptors web hierarchies. Twenty well known empirical have transformed into DAGs and relation observed between number nodes their level effective connectivity. Although derived using topological arguments, exponent equation C ∝ Aη shows same mathematical properties than its functional counterpart computed through flow analysis. This suggests η can be proxy in webs. The values this coefficient lower ones obtained suggesting lie range medium-to-low networks. challenges idea these systems would more other types