MODULAR: Software for the Autonomous Computation of Modularity in Large Network Sets

TL;DR

MODULAR is a software tool designed to quickly and automatically compute the modularity of ecological networks, supporting various network formats and optimization methods to identify network modules.

Contribution

It introduces a new software that automates modularity calculation in ecological networks using multiple metrics and optimization techniques.

Findings

Supports unipartite and bipartite networks

Includes multiple optimization algorithms

Compares modularity against null models

Abstract

Ecological systems can be seen as networks of interactions between individual, species, or habitat patches. A key feature of many ecological networks is their organization into modules, which are subsets of elements that are more connected to each other than to the other elements in the network. We introduce MODULAR to perform rapid and autonomous calculation of modularity in sets of networks. MODULAR reads a set of files with matrices or edge lists that represent unipartite or bipartite networks, and identify modules using two different modularity metrics that have been previously used in studies of ecological networks. To find the network partition that maximizes modularity, the software offers five optimization methods to the user. We also included two of the most common null models that are used in studies of ecological networks to verify how the modularity found by the maximization of each metric differs from a theoretical benchmark.