Measuring nestedness: A comparative study of the performance of different metrics

Ecology and Evolution
Claudia Payrato-BorrasYamir Moreno

Abstract

Nestedness is a property of interaction networks widely observed in natural mutualistic communities, among other systems. A perfectly nested network is characterized by the peculiarity that the interactions of any node form a subset of the interactions of all nodes with higher degree. Despite a widespread interest on this pattern, no general consensus exists on how to measure it. Instead, several nestedness metrics, based on different but not necessarily independent properties of the networks, coexist in the literature, blurring the comparison between ecosystems. In this work, we present a detailed critical study of the behavior of six nestedness metrics and the variants of two of them. In order to evaluate their performance, we compare the obtained values of the nestedness of a large set of real networks among them and against a maximum-entropy and maximum-likelihood null model. We also analyze the dependencies of each metrics on different network parameters, as size, fill, and eccentricity. Our results point out, first, that the metrics do not rank networks universally in terms of their degree of nestedness. Furthermore, several metrics show significant dependencies on the network properties considered. The study of these dep...Continue Reading

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Citations

Nov 18, 2020·Scientific Reports·Matteo BrunoGuido Caldarelli
Aug 27, 2021·Molecular Ecology·David R Hemprich-BennettElizabeth L Clare

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Software Mentioned

Open
nullnest
BINMATNEST
bipartite

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