Stability as a natural selection mechanism on interacting networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a stability-based evolutionary mechanism for growing networks of interacting agents, demonstrating how biological network properties can emerge through a self-organized process driven by global stability constraints.

Contribution

It proposes a novel stability-driven model for network growth, linking stability to the emergence of biological network topologies and analyzing its impact on network dynamics.

Findings

Biological network properties emerge naturally from stability constraints

The model reproduces key topological features of biological networks

Stability selection influences network dynamics significantly

Abstract

Biological networks of interacting agents exhibit similar topological properties for a wide range of scales, from cellular to ecological levels, suggesting the existence of a common evolutionary origin. A general evolutionary mechanism based on global stability has been proposed recently [J I Perotti, O V Billoni, F A Tamarit, D R Chialvo, S A Cannas, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 108701 (2009)]. This mechanism is incorporated into a model of a growing network of interacting agents in which each new agent's membership in the network is determined by the agent's effect on the network's global stability. We show that, out of this stability constraint, several topological properties observed in biological networks emerge in a self organized manner. The influence of the stability selection mechanism on the dynamics associated to the resulting network is analyzed as well.