Network Evolution: Exploring the Change and Adaptation of Complex Ecological Systems Over Deep Time

Abstract

Abstract One of the most exciting new directions in research on food webs and ecological networks is network evolution or, in other words, the development of the structure and function of ecological networks over time scales long enough for node selection and speciation to occur (Caldarelli et al. 1998; Drossel and McKane 2002; Worden 2003; Yoshida 2003; Cattin et al. 2004; Rossberg 2004; Anderson and Jensen 2005). Most food-web studies focus on shorter-term snapshots of network structure and time series of network dynamics. The difference between long-term evolution over “deep time” and short-term structure and dynamics is a familiar one. Hutchinson distinguished the two by suggesting that we “view the natural world as the ecological theater, serving as a stage for the evolutionary play” (Hutchinson 1965). Following this suggestion, research on network evolution goes well beyond contemporary topology, theatrical population booms and busts, and more staid equilibria. That is, network evolution encompasses a broad spectrum of studies, from the dynamics of intra-node stocks and inter-node flows to the evolutionary play of node survival, adaptation, and speciation over time. Though the distinction between network dynamics and network evolution may be familiar, much research occupies a kind of gray area in between these two ends of a spectrum. For example, in adaptive prey preference and feeding behavior models