Abstract
Node centrality is an important metric in network analysis,
allowing the most influential nodes in a system to be identified.
This thesis analyzes a directed food web network in order to
discover the most influential predator and prey species in the
ecosystem, and to examine the different possible constructs for
analyzing time-dependent networks. The communicability matrices for
each individual month as well as the aggregate graph, and three
variations of the temporal communicability matrix were computed.
The individual months were compared, revealing a unique top
predator species for almost every month, but a mostly fixed list of
top preys. The aggregate graph appeared to favor the species
expected from comparing the graphs. The temporal matrices, on the
other hand, yielded seemingly conflicting results between predators
and prey on what resulted in a top species. Predator rankings
seemed to depend heavily on which temporal matrix was used, while
top prey rankings were relatively stable.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Background 4
3 Problem 10
4 Methods 12
5 Results and Discussion 14
5.1 Communicabilities in Individual Months . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . 14
5.2 Temporal Communicability vs Aggregate Graph . . . . . . .
. . . . . 21
6 Conclusion 29
7 Appendix 32
About this Honors Thesis
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