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Interaction strength promotes robustness against cascading effects in mutualistic networks.

ABSTRACT: Perturbations, such as fluctuations in abundance, can ripple across species assemblages through ecological interactions. Furthermore, the way in which ecological interactions are organized into a network and the interaction strengths connecting species may be important for cascading effects. Previous work revealed that network structure determines how cascading effects spread across species assemblages. A next step is to understand how interaction strengths influence cascading effects. Here, we assume that perturbations have negative effects, and we evaluate whether interaction strength affects network robustness to cascading effects in mutualistic interactions, and examine the role of network structure in mediating perturbation cascades when interaction strength is incorporated. We combine empirical data on 18 mutualistic networks, two simulations scenarios, and network theory, to investigate how network structure affects perturbation spreading time, a proxy of network robustness to cascading effects. Simulations in which we included interaction strength presented higher mean spreading time, indicating that interaction strength increases network robustness. Richness, modularity, and nestedness had a strong, positive effect, on mean perturbation spreading time regardless of the interaction strengths. We found that network structure and the distribution of interaction strengths affected communities' robustness to perturbation spreading. Our results contribute to the discussion on the danger that ecosystems face when species, and interactions alike, become extinct.

SUBMITTER: Gaiarsa MP

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6345762 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Interaction strength promotes robustness against cascading effects in mutualistic networks.

Gaiarsa Marília P MP Guimarães Paulo R PR

Scientific reports 20190124 1

Perturbations, such as fluctuations in abundance, can ripple across species assemblages through ecological interactions. Furthermore, the way in which ecological interactions are organized into a network and the interaction strengths connecting species may be important for cascading effects. Previous work revealed that network structure determines how cascading effects spread across species assemblages. A next step is to understand how interaction strengths influence cascading effects. Here, we ...[more]

PMID: 30679559

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Project description:A most important property of biochemical systems is robustness. Static robustness, e.g., homeostasis, is the insensitivity of a state against perturbations, whereas dynamics robustness, e.g., homeorhesis, is the insensitivity of a dynamic process. In contrast to the extensively studied static robustness, dynamics robustness, i.e., how a system creates an invariant temporal profile against perturbations, is little explored despite transient dynamics being crucial for cellular fates and are reported to be robust experimentally. For example, the duration of a stimulus elicits different phenotypic responses, and signaling networks process and encode temporal information. Hence, robustness in time courses will be necessary for functional biochemical networks. Based on dynamical systems theory, we uncovered a general mechanism to achieve dynamics robustness. Using a three-stage linear signaling cascade as an example, we found that the temporal profiles and response duration post-stimulus is robust to perturbations against certain parameters. Then analyzing the linearized model, we elucidated the criteria of when signaling cascades will display dynamics robustness. We found that changes in the upstream modules are masked in the cascade, and that the response duration is mainly controlled by the rate-limiting module and organization of the cascade's kinetics. Specifically, we found two necessary conditions for dynamics robustness in signaling cascades: 1) Constraint on the rate-limiting process: The phosphatase activity in the perturbed module is not the slowest. 2) Constraints on the initial conditions: The kinase activity needs to be fast enough such that each module is saturated even with fast phosphatase activity and upstream changes are attenuated. We discussed the relevance of such robustness to several biological examples and the validity of the above conditions therein. Given the applicability of dynamics robustness to a variety of systems, it will provide a general basis for how biological systems function dynamically.

Dataset Information

Interaction strength promotes robustness against cascading effects in mutualistic networks.

Publications

Interaction strength promotes robustness against cascading effects in mutualistic networks.

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