Delmas Eva, Besson Mathilde, Brice Marie-Hélène, Burkle Laura A, Dalla Riva Giulio V, Fortin Marie-Josée, Gravel Dominique, Guimarães Paulo R, Hembry David H, Newman Erica A, Olesen Jens M, Pires Mathias M, Yeakel Justin D, Poisot Timothée
Département de Sciences Biologiques, Université de Montréal, Montréal, H2V 2J7, Canada.
Québec Centre for Biodiversity Sciences, McGill University, Montréal, H3A 1B1, Canada.
Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc. 2019 Feb;94(1):16-36. doi: 10.1111/brv.12433. Epub 2018 Jun 20.
Network approaches to ecological questions have been increasingly used, particularly in recent decades. The abstraction of ecological systems - such as communities - through networks of interactions between their components indeed provides a way to summarize this information with single objects. The methodological framework derived from graph theory also provides numerous approaches and measures to analyze these objects and can offer new perspectives on established ecological theories as well as tools to address new challenges. However, prior to using these methods to test ecological hypotheses, it is necessary that we understand, adapt, and use them in ways that both allow us to deliver their full potential and account for their limitations. Here, we attempt to increase the accessibility of network approaches by providing a review of the tools that have been developed so far, with - what we believe to be - their appropriate uses and potential limitations. This is not an exhaustive review of all methods and metrics, but rather, an overview of tools that are robust, informative, and ecologically sound. After providing a brief presentation of species interaction networks and how to build them in order to summarize ecological information of different types, we then classify methods and metrics by the types of ecological questions that they can be used to answer from global to local scales, including methods for hypothesis testing and future perspectives. Specifically, we show how the organization of species interactions in a community yields different network structures (e.g., more or less dense, modular or nested), how different measures can be used to describe and quantify these emerging structures, and how to compare communities based on these differences in structures. Within networks, we illustrate metrics that can be used to describe and compare the functional and dynamic roles of species based on their position in the network and the organization of their interactions as well as associated new methods to test the significance of these results. Lastly, we describe potential fruitful avenues for new methodological developments to address novel ecological questions.
网络方法在生态学问题中的应用越来越广泛，尤其是在最近几十年。通过生态系统各组成部分之间的相互作用网络对生态系统（如群落）进行抽象，确实提供了一种用单一对象来总结这些信息的方法。源自图论的方法框架还提供了众多分析这些对象的方法和度量，并能为已有的生态学理论提供新的视角，以及应对新挑战的工具。然而，在使用这些方法来检验生态学假设之前，我们有必要以既能充分发挥其潜力又能考虑其局限性的方式来理解、调整和使用它们。在此，我们试图通过回顾目前已开发的工具、其适用情况以及潜在局限性，来提高网络方法的可及性。这并非对所有方法和指标的详尽综述，而是对稳健、信息丰富且符合生态学原理的工具的概述。在简要介绍物种相互作用网络以及如何构建它们以总结不同类型的生态信息之后，我们接着根据可用于回答从全球到局部尺度的生态学问题的类型对方法和指标进行分类，包括假设检验方法和未来展望。具体而言，我们展示了群落中物种相互作用的组织如何产生不同的网络结构（例如，或多或少密集、模块化或嵌套），如何使用不同的度量来描述和量化这些新兴结构，以及如何基于这些结构差异来比较群落。在网络内部，我们阐述了可用于根据物种在网络中的位置及其相互作用的组织来描述和比较物种的功能和动态作用的度量，以及用于检验这些结果显著性的相关新方法。最后，我们描述了新方法开发中可能富有成效的途径，以解决新出现的生态学问题。
