Biogeography revisited with network theory: retracing the history of hydrothermal vent communities.

Defining biogeographic provinces to understand the history and evolution of communities associated with a given kind of ecosystem is challenging and usually requires a priori assumptions to be made. We applied network theory, a holistic and exploratory method, to the most complete database of faunal distribution available on oceanic hydrothermal vents, environments which support fragmented and unstable ecosystems, to infer the processes driving their worldwide biogeography. Besides the identification of robust provinces, the network topology allowed us to identify preferential pathways that had hitherto been overlooked.

Network analysis identifies weak and strong links in a metapopulation system.

The identification of key populations shaping the structure and connectivity of metapopulation systems is a major challenge in population ecology. The use of molecular markers in the theoretical framework of population genetics has allowed great advances in this field, but the prime question of quantifying the role of each population in the system remains unresolved. Furthermore, the use and interpretation of classical methods are still bounded by the need for a priori information and underlying assumptions that are seldom respected in natural systems.

Spectrum of genetic diversity and networks of clonal organisms.

Clonal reproduction characterizes a wide range of species including clonal plants in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and clonal microbes such as bacteria and parasitic protozoa, with a key role in human health and ecosystem processes. Clonal organisms present a particular challenge in population genetics because, in addition to the possible existence of replicates of the same genotype in a given sample, some of the hypotheses and concepts underlying classical population genetics models are irreconcilable with clonality. The genetic structure and diversity of clonal populations were examined using a combination of new tools to analyse microsatellite data in the marine angiosperm Posidonia oceanica.

Dynamic critical approach to self-organized criticality.

A dynamic scaling ansatz for the approach to the self-organized critical (SOC) regime is proposed and tested by means of extensive simulations applied to the Bak-Sneppen model (BS), which exhibits robust SOC behavior. Considering the short-time scaling behavior of the density of sites [rho(t)] below the critical value, it is shown that (i) starting the dynamics with configurations such that rho(t=0)-->0 one observes an initial increase of the density with exponent theta=0.12(2); (ii) using initial configurations with rho(t=0)-->1, the density decays with exponent delta=0.

Scale-free networks on lattices.

We suggest a method for embedding scale-free networks, with degree distribution Pk approximately k(-lambda), in regular Euclidean lattices accounting for geographical properties. The embedding is driven by a natural constraint of minimization of the total length of the links in the system. We find that all networks with lambda>2 can be successfully embedded up to a (Euclidean) distance xi which can be made as large as desired upon the changing of an external parameter.