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Emergence of structural and dynamical properties of ecological mutualistic networks

In ecological communities, cooperation among species tends to result in mutualistic networks with nested structures. This is thought to increase biodiversity and persistence but may be less stable than unstructured networks. Paper shows how nested networks may result from mechanism that maximises species abundances in mutualistic communities; abundance of nested species is found to be directly linked to resilience of community. Proposed framework may be applicable for investigating driving forces sculpting mutualistic architectures in other biological networks (for example, protein interaction) or indeed in social/economic networks. Paper is identified as research group highlight in REF5.