PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - S. Suweis
AU  - J. Grilli
AU  - Jayanth R. Banavar
AU  - S. Allesina
AU  - A. Maritan
TI  - Effect of Localization on the Stability of Mutualistic Ecological Networks
AID  - 10.1101/023275
DP  - 2015 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 023275
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/07/27/023275.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2015/07/27/023275.full
AB  - The relationships between the core-periphery architecture of the species interaction network and the mechanisms ensuring the stability in mutualistic ecological communities are still unclear. In particular, most studies have focused their attention on asymptotic resilience or persistence, neglecting how perturbations propagate through the system. Here we develop a theoretical framework to evaluate the relationship between architecture of the interaction networks and the impact of perturbations by studying localization, a measure describing the ability of the perturbation to propagate through the network. We show that mutualistic ecological communities are localized, and localization reduces perturbation propagation and attenuates its impact on species abundance. Localization depends on the topology of the interaction networks, and it positively correlates with the variance of the weighted degree distribution, a signature of the network topological hetereogenity. Our results provide a different perspective on the interplay between the architecture of interaction networks in mutualistic communities and their stability.