IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecomod/v218y2008i3p367-374.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

On the use of multi-species NK models to explore ecosystem development

Author

Listed:
  • Swanack, Todd M.
  • Grant, William E.
  • Fath, Brian D.

Abstract

The search for general laws governing the co-evolution of ecological communities, and the resulting trends in the development of ecosystem structure has led researchers down at least three broad paths, exploring: (1) thermodynamics, (2) networks, and (3) species assemblages. Recently, Fath and Grant [Fath, B.D., Grant, W.E., 2007. Ecosystems as evolutionary complex systems: network analysis of fitness models. Environmental Modelling & Software 22, 693–700] suggested the possibility of linking ecological network analysis to multi-species NK models of self-organizing systems [Kauffman, S.A., 1993. The Origins of Order: Self-organization and Selection in Evolution. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 709p.] to explore the dynamics of ecosystem development. In this paper, we describe modifications to the multi-species NK model that allow connectedness among species, or ecosystem structure, to evolve during a simulation, examine the robustness of model behavior to changes in the number of both species and genes included in the system, and use the modified model to simulate ecosystem development over 200 generations for each of 23 combinations of number of species and number of genes in the system. Simulated system connectedness evolved noticeably and quickly to an intermediate, but lower than expected, level as a consequence of system self-organizational processes strong enough to override the random processes at work in the system, and general trends in relative system connectedness were robust to changes in the number of species and the number of genes included in the system. We compare these trends in system connectivity to those generated by the Tangled Nature model [Laird, S., Jensen, H.J., 2007. Correlation, selection and the evolution of species networks. Ecological Modelling 209, 149–156] and to those based on field data on food webs, and comment on future work using multi-species NK models to explore ecosystem development.

Suggested Citation

  • Swanack, Todd M. & Grant, William E. & Fath, Brian D., 2008. "On the use of multi-species NK models to explore ecosystem development," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 218(3), pages 367-374.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:218:y:2008:i:3:p:367-374
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2008.07.022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304380008003670
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2008.07.022?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laird, Simon & Jensen, Henrik Jeldtoft, 2007. "Correlation, selection and the evolution of species networks," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 209(2), pages 149-156.
    2. Daniel A. Levinthal, 1997. "Adaptation on Rugged Landscapes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(7), pages 934-950, July.
    3. Daniel Solow & Chartchai Leenawong, 2003. "Mathematical Models for Studying the Value of Cooperational Leadership in Team Replacement," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 9(1), pages 61-81, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Campos, Paulo R.A. & de Oliveira, Viviane M. & Rosas, Alexandre, 2010. "Epistasis and environmental heterogeneity in the speciation process," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 221(21), pages 2546-2554.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Arthur, R. & Sibani, P., 2017. "Decision making on fitness landscapes," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 471(C), pages 696-704.
    2. Henri A. Schildt & Markku V.J. Maula & Thomas Keil, 2005. "Explorative and Exploitative Learning from External Corporate Ventures," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 29(4), pages 493-515, July.
    3. Li, Xu & Vermeulen, Freek, 2021. "High risk, low return (and vice versa): the effect of product innovation on firm performance in a transition economy," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 120268, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Felipe A. Csaszar & Nicolaj Siggelkow, 2010. "How Much to Copy? Determinants of Effective Imitation Breadth," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 661-676, June.
    5. Steven M. Gray & Andrew P. Knight & Markus Baer, 2020. "On the Emergence of Collective Psychological Ownership in New Creative Teams," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(1), pages 141-164, January.
    6. Giovanni Gavetti & Constance E. Helfat & Luigi Marengo, 2017. "Searching, Shaping, and the Quest for Superior Performance," Strategy Science, INFORMS, vol. 2(3), pages 194-209, September.
    7. Robert P. Garrett Jr. & Jeffrey G. Covin, 2015. "Internal Corporate Venture Operations Independence and Performance: A Knowledge–Based Perspective," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 39(4), pages 763-790, July.
    8. Arie Y Lewin & Silvia Massini & Carine Peeters, 2020. "Absorptive capacity, socially enabling mechanisms, and the role of learning from trial and error experiments: A tribute to Dan Levinthal’s contribution to international business research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 51(9), pages 1568-1579, December.
    9. Yuchen Zhang & Wei Yang, 2022. "Breakthrough invention and problem complexity: Evidence from a quasi‐experiment," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(12), pages 2510-2544, December.
    10. Hazhir Rahmandad & Nelson Repenning, 2016. "Capability erosion dynamics," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(4), pages 649-672, April.
    11. Sai Yayavaram & Wei-Ru Chen, 2015. "Changes in firm knowledge couplings and firm innovation performance: The moderating role of technological complexity," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(3), pages 377-396, March.
    12. Koen Frenken & Luigi Marengo & Marco Valente, 1999. "Interdependencies, nearly-decomposability and adaption," CEEL Working Papers 9903, Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    13. Zand, Fardad & Van Beers, Cees & Van Leeuwen, George, 2011. "Information technology, organizational change and firm productivity: A panel study of complementarity effects and clustering patterns in Manufacturing and Services," MPRA Paper 46469, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Laura J. Kornish & Karl T. Ulrich, 2011. "Opportunity Spaces in Innovation: Empirical Analysis of Large Samples of Ideas," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(1), pages 107-128, January.
    15. Teppo Felin & Stuart Kauffman & Roger Koppl & Giuseppe Longo, 2014. "Economic Opportunity and Evolution: Beyond Landscapes and Bounded Rationality," Post-Print hal-01415115, HAL.
    16. Fei Li & Jin Chen & Ying Ying, 2019. "Innovation Search Scope, Technological Complexity, and Environmental Turbulence: A N-K Simulation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-12, August.
    17. Hazhir Rahmandad, 2012. "Impact of Growth Opportunities and Competition on Firm-Level Capability Development Trade-offs," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 138-154, February.
    18. Ganco, Martin, 2017. "NK model as a representation of innovative search," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 46(10), pages 1783-1800.
    19. Felipe A. Csaszar & Daniel A. Levinthal, 2016. "Mental representation and the discovery of new strategies," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(10), pages 2031-2049, October.
    20. Andreas Blume & April Mitchell Franco & Paul Heidhues, 2021. "Dynamic coordination via organizational routines," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(4), pages 1001-1047, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecomod:v:218:y:2008:i:3:p:367-374. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/ecological-modelling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.