Algorithmic reconstruction of trophic networks from open-access species lists reveals key organisms in real ecosystems
Fig 9
(A). Classical networks cannot capture the complex interactions of amphibious/biphasic life cycles. (B). A multilayer network with larval-adult and aquatic-terrestrial compartments allows representing, for instance, adult frogs feeding on adult dragonflies and dragonflies’ nymphs feeding on frogs’ tadpoles. (C). Organisms movements across layers depend on key functional traits that can be mined from public databases. These traits can inform rules to automatically build multilayer networks via a matrix operator (D). An automatically constructed multilayer network (Ntsikeni Reserve, South Africa). Most trophic edges (purple) occur within sub-habitat compartments, yet some adult organisms can move and feed across sub-habitats (green bi-directional arrows). Many ontogenic edges (orange) connect the aquatic larvae with terrestrial adults (e.g., dragonflies). Big arrows and dashed circles have been manually added to show the main functional groups and their connections. N = 170, half of the plants removed for the sake of clarity. Credits: Panels A-B: animal silhouettes obtained from OpenClipart (openclipart.org), released under the CC0 (public domain) dedication. Panel D (left to right): world map from Natural Earth (naturalearthdata.com, public domain); map of South Africa from Natural Earth (naturalearthdata.com, public domain); photograph from RAMSAR (rsis.ramsar.org), licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).