3,027 research outputs found
Functional Integration of Ecological Networks through Pathway Proliferation
Large-scale structural patterns commonly occur in network models of complex
systems including a skewed node degree distribution and small-world topology.
These patterns suggest common organizational constraints and similar functional
consequences. Here, we investigate a structural pattern termed pathway
proliferation. Previous research enumerating pathways that link species
determined that as pathway length increases, the number of pathways tends to
increase without bound. We hypothesize that this pathway proliferation
influences the flow of energy, matter, and information in ecosystems. In this
paper, we clarify the pathway proliferation concept, introduce a measure of the
node--node proliferation rate, describe factors influencing the rate, and
characterize it in 17 large empirical food-webs. During this investigation, we
uncovered a modular organization within these systems. Over half of the
food-webs were composed of one or more subgroups that were strongly connected
internally, but weakly connected to the rest of the system. Further, these
modules had distinct proliferation rates. We conclude that pathway
proliferation in ecological networks reveals subgroups of species that will be
functionally integrated through cyclic indirect effects.Comment: 29 pages, 2 figures, 3 tables, Submitted to Journal of Theoretical
Biolog
Parameterized Algorithms for Directed Maximum Leaf Problems
We prove that finding a rooted subtree with at least leaves in a digraph
is a fixed parameter tractable problem. A similar result holds for finding
rooted spanning trees with many leaves in digraphs from a wide family
that includes all strong and acyclic digraphs. This settles completely an open
question of Fellows and solves another one for digraphs in . Our
algorithms are based on the following combinatorial result which can be viewed
as a generalization of many results for a `spanning tree with many leaves' in
the undirected case, and which is interesting on its own: If a digraph of order with minimum in-degree at least 3 contains a rooted
spanning tree, then contains one with at least leaves
On the complexity of the chip-firing reachability problem
In this paper, we study the complexity of the chip-firing reachability
problem. We show that for Eulerian digraphs, the reachability problem can be
decided in strongly polynomial time, even if the digraph has multiple edges. We
also show a special case when the reachability problem can be decided in
polynomial time for general digraphs: if the target distribution is recurrent
restricted to each strongly connected component. As a further positive result,
we show that the chip-firing reachability problem is in co-NP for general
digraphs. We also show that the chip-firing halting problem is in co-NP for
Eulerian digraphs
Strong Connectivity in Directed Graphs under Failures, with Application
In this paper, we investigate some basic connectivity problems in directed
graphs (digraphs). Let be a digraph with edges and vertices, and
let be the digraph obtained after deleting edge from . As
a first result, we show how to compute in worst-case time: The
total number of strongly connected components in , for all edges
in . The size of the largest and of the smallest strongly
connected components in , for all edges in .
Let be strongly connected. We say that edge separates two vertices
and , if and are no longer strongly connected in .
As a second set of results, we show how to build in time -space
data structures that can answer in optimal time the following basic
connectivity queries on digraphs: Report in worst-case time all
the strongly connected components of , for a query edge .
Test whether an edge separates two query vertices in worst-case
time. Report all edges that separate two query vertices in optimal
worst-case time, i.e., in time , where is the number of separating
edges. (For , the time is ).
All of the above results extend to vertex failures. All our bounds are tight
and are obtained with a common algorithmic framework, based on a novel compact
representation of the decompositions induced by the -connectivity (i.e.,
-edge and -vertex) cuts in digraphs, which might be of independent
interest. With the help of our data structures we can design efficient
algorithms for several other connectivity problems on digraphs and we can also
obtain in linear time a strongly connected spanning subgraph of with
edges that maintains the -connectivity cuts of and the decompositions
induced by those cuts.Comment: An extended abstract of this work appeared in the SODA 201
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