Abstract：
Beyond abiotic conditions, do population dynamics mostly depend on a species\' direct predators, preys and conspecifics? Or can indirect feedback that ripples across the whole community be equally important? Determining where ecological communities sit on the spectrum between these two characterizations requires a metric able to capture the difference between them. Here we show that the spectral radius of a community\'s interaction matrix provides such a metric, thus a measure of ecological collectivity, which is accessible from imperfect knowledge of biotic interactions and related to observable signatures. This measure of collectivity integrates existing approaches to complexity, interaction structure and indirect interactions. Our work thus provides an original perspective on the question of to what degree communities are more than loose collections of species or simple interaction motifs and explains when pragmatic reductionist approaches ought to suffice or fail when applied to ecological communities.
摘要：
超越非生物条件，种群动态是否主要取决于物种的直接捕食者，猎物和物种？或者在整个社区中产生涟漪的间接反馈同样重要吗？确定生态社区在这两个特征之间的频谱上的位置需要一个能够捕获它们之间差异的度量标准。在这里，我们展示了社区相互作用矩阵的谱半径提供了这样一个度量，因此衡量生态集体，这可以从生物相互作用的不完美知识中获得，并与可观察到的特征相关。这种集体性的衡量标准整合了现有的复杂性方法，相互作用结构和间接相互作用。因此，我们的工作为社区在多大程度上不仅仅是松散的物种集合或简单的相互作用主题提供了原始观点，并解释了实用主义的还原论方法在应用于生态社区时应该足够或失败。
