ArticleNature ecology & evolution2022
Ecological network complexity scales with area.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed.
- Interaction matrices as unifying tools for navigating ecological complexity.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Review
- Biotic interactions biogeography: A framework for understanding how species interactions shape biodiversity patterns across scales.PLoS biology · 2026Review
- Global evidence of non-pyramidal and uniform ratios of animal diversity across terrestrial trophic levels.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Potential for synergistic conservation through area-based strategies.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2025Article
- Network theory predicts ecosystem robustness across environmental conditions.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Mixed effects of protected areas on avian food webs.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Publication-driven consistency in food web structures: Implications for comparative ecology.Ecology · 2025Article
- Spatially explicit predictions of food web structure from regional-level data.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Individual diet variability shapes the architecture of Antarctic benthic food webs.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Power laws in species' biotic interaction networks can be inferred from co-occurrence data.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Temperature-dependent trophic associations modulate soil bacterial communities along latitudinal gradients.The ISME journal · 2024Article
- The reliability of regional ecological knowledge to build local interaction networks: a test using seed-dispersal networks across land-bridge islands.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Quantifying and estimating ecological network diversity based on incomplete sampling data.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Article
- Rapid monitoring of ecological persistence.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Article
- Shortcomings of reusing species interaction networks created by different sets of researchers.PLoS biology · 2023Article
- Composition, structure and robustness of Lichen guilds.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Plant-frugivore network simplification under habitat fragmentation leaves a small core of interacting generalists.Communications biology · 2022Article
- Emergent properties of species-habitat networks in an insular forest landscape.Science advances · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
29 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Larger geographical areas contain more species-an observation raised to a law in ecology. Less explored is whether biodiversity changes are accompanied by a modification of interaction networks. We use data from 32 spatial interaction networks from different ecosystems to analyse how network structure changes with area. We find that basic community structure descriptors (number of species, links and links per species) increase with area following a power law. Yet, the distribution of links per species varies little with area, indicating that the fundamental organization of interactions within networks is conserved. Our null model analyses suggest that the spatial scaling of network structure is determined by factors beyond species richness and the number of links. We demonstrate that biodiversity-area relationships can be extended from species counts to higher levels of network complexity. Therefore, the consequences of anthropogenic habitat destruction may extend from species loss to wider simplification of natural communities.
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Registered trials
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