Critical threshold

Tags

giant component, networks, paleo-food web, paleontology, simulations, Threshold, Tipping point

LAZ with CAZ richnesses for g10 and g11

What causes the critical threshold increase of secondary extinction in a typical CEG simulation? It cannot be a simple result of increasing the perturbation magnitude, ; that is given by topololgical secondary extinction. CEG differs from the simple topological model in several ways. First, link strengths are not uniform but are instead a function of in-degree. Second, nodes are not equivalent, but have dynamic population sizes. And third, there are topdown effects. Somehow, top down feedback initiates catastrophic collapse at a very specific perturbation magnitude. Bel ow that threshold, responses are dampened. Why? I hypothesize that at the threshold, a giant component in the network is activated. Given that the component is present no matter the magnitude of perturbation, activation must depend on link strengths, which in CEG are dynamic.