Coexistence mechanism of ecological specialists and generalists based on a network dimension reduction method.

As an ecological strategy for species coexistence, some species adapt to a wide range of habitats, while others specialize in particular environments. Such 'generalists' and 'specialists' achieve normal ecological balance through a complex network of interactions between species. However, the role of these interactions in maintaining the coexistence of generalist and specialist species has not been elucidated within a general theoretical framework. Here, we analyze the ecological mechanism for the coexistence of specialist and generalist species in a class of mutualistic and competitive interaction ecosystems based on the network dimension reduction method. We find that ecological specialists and generalists can be identified based on the number of their respective interactions. We also find, using real-world empirical network simulations, that the removal of ecological generalists can lead to the collapse of local ecosystems, which is rarely observed with the loss of ecological specialists.

Effect of network nestedness on stability, diversity, and resilience of ecosystems.

The structural nestedness has important effects on the ecosystem's robustness, stability, and species diversity, but quantitative analysis tools are still lacking at present. According to the competitive and mutually beneficial interactions among ecosystems species, we designed a quantitative analysis tool of nestedness on ecosystems metrics by mapping the ecosystems into symbolic networks and calculating the network's competitive nestedness and mutualistic nestedness with an overlap metric, respectively. The results of the real system and network models show that in the competitive and mutualistic coupling network, the competitive nestedness reduces the biodiversity and robustness of the network, but the mutualistic nestedness has the opposite effect. Moreover, the larger the competitive nestedness in the pure structural case, the more unstable the ecological network tends to be. However, once the dynamical governing mechanism is considered, the competitive nestedness would make the system more stable. Our work enables us to understand more specifically the effects of the network structure on ecosystems and helps reveal the mechanism that how nestedness can be changed to increase network stability, species diversity, and robustness.

Analysis of epidemic vaccination strategies on heterogeneous networks: Based on SEIRV model and evolutionary game.

Nowadays, vaccination is the most effective way to control the epidemic spreading. In this paper, an epidemic SEIRV (susceptible-exposed-infected-removed -vaccinated) model and an evolutionary game model are established to analyze the difference between mandatory vaccination method and voluntary vaccination method on heterogeneous networks. Firstly, we divide the population into four categories, including susceptible individuals, exposed individuals, infected individuals and removed individuals. Based on the mean field approximation theory, differential equations are developed to characterize the changes of the proportions of the four groups over time under mandatory vaccination. Then through the analysis of the differential equations, the disease-free equilibrium point (DFE) and the endemic disease equilibrium point (EDE) are obtained. Also, the basic reproduction number is obtained by the next-generation matrix method and the stability analysis of the equilibrium points is performed. Next, by considering factors such as vaccination cost, treatment cost and government subsidy rate, differential equations are established to represent the change of vaccination rate over time. By analyzing the final vaccination coverage rate, we can get the minimum vaccination cost to make infectious disease disappear. Finally, the Monte Carlo method is used for numerical simulation to verify the results obtained from the theoretical analysis. Using the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic data from Wuhan, China, the experimental results show that when the effectiveness rate of vaccination is 0.75, the vaccination cost is not higher than 0.886 so that the vaccination strategy can be spread among the population. If mandatory vaccination is adopted, the minimum vaccination rate is 0.146.

Universal behavior of cascading failures in interdependent networks.

Catastrophic and major disasters in real-world systems, such as blackouts in power grids or global failures in critical infrastructures, are often triggered by minor events which originate a cascading failure in interdependent graphs. We present here a self-consistent theory enabling the systematic analysis of cascading failures in such networks and encompassing a broad range of dynamical systems, from epidemic spreading, to birth-death processes, to biochemical and regulatory dynamics. We offer testable predictions on breakdown scenarios, and, in particular, we unveil the conditions under which the percolation transition is of the first-order or the second-order type, as well as prove that accounting for dynamics in the nodes always accelerates the cascading process. Besides applying directly to relevant real-world situations, our results give practical hints on how to engineer more robust networked systems.