Degree Correlations in a Dynamically Generated Model Food Web

TL;DR

This paper investigates the structure of food webs generated by a predator-prey coevolution model, revealing distinct phases with different diversity levels and analyzing their network properties through large-scale simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a simple coevolution model that captures community structures and analyzes the resulting food web degree correlations and distributions.

Findings

Identification of metastable low-diversity and stable high-diversity phases.

Analysis of joint indegree-outdegree distributions in the high-diversity phase.

Insights into the network structure of coevolved food webs.

Abstract

We explore aspects of the community structures generated by a simple predator-prey model of biological coevolution, using large-scale kinetic Monte Carlo simulations. The model accounts for interspecies and intraspecies competition for resources, as well as adaptive foraging behavior. It produces a metastable low-diversity phase and a stable high-diversity phase. The structures and joint indegree-outdegree distributions of the food webs generated in the latter phase are discussed.