How exactly do you want to incorporate? What specific aspect of the network do you want to measure with it?

Nowadays, network metrics like nestedness, modularity, and complementary specialization are only based on realized interactions. I would like to incorporate in network metrics the prey availability, once realized links can be influenced by this availability, not being a choice of a predator but the result of great availability of the environment.

Can you Karoline, please give more details about your data?

Preciso entender melhor isso, aninhamento e complementaridade são métricas para redes bipartidas somente (salvo engano)

Podemos conversar semana que vem

Hallo Karoline,

Perhaps you already spoke with Diogo and got an answer to your question. If not, then could you tell me please whether your question means that - in addition to the existence of a predator-prey link in your bipartite trophic nets - you want to incorporate the influence on web metrics of the amount of prey in such links ?

Hello Dr. Davis,

I know that networks are related only to realized connections among species, however, in some trophic networks, the prey availability may influence some interactions. For example, a prey type I can be abundant in a network, favoring the major number of interactions, and another prey type II can be rare, so presenting a few numbers of interactions. Not necessary the predator prefer the prey type I, the high number of interactions is related to the bigger abundance of this prey in the environment than prey II. Thus, if we consider the abundance of preys, the prey type II is preferable than prey I, but in networks metrics, this can be occulted. I would like to add in networks this information or maybe ponder networks metrics by prey availability.

Andrew Davis this was exactly the point I was discussing with Karol earlier this week. I think there're two main theories involved in her question - complex networks/food webs and optimal foraging - that have not been synthesized yet for us to be able to ask that kind of question Karoline Ceron is interested in. Therefore, we still lack theoretical guidance, which hampers our hability to ask this kind of question, at least in my point of view.

We analysed the influences of prey availability and habitat structure on the food web structure of an omnivorous marsupial in the Cerrados of Brazil. I think our methods might give you some ideas about how to incorporate your variable into the network analysis.

Article Availability of food resources and habitat structure shape t...

Hello Hernani Fernandes Magalhaes Oliveira . Thanks for share your work! It is a great paper, congrats! Also, it will be helpful in our analysis!

That's a clever way to solve the problem. But notice you actually have not taken into account availability per se when calculating modularity and nestedness. But sure is a way to go for Karol

What do you mean by availability per se?

Sorry for the late reply. I meant using the species composition or richness of prey (=availability) not consumed (i.e., that are not linked to any predator in the food web), but occurred in the same sites to calculate modularity and nestedness. What you did was to calculate both modularity and nestedness and then posteriorly relate these to species diversity and biomass.

You could do something similar to what we did, incorporating the abundance at the node-level (to put it simply: a weighted-mean). Karoline Ceron

Just got published. We did the exercise on generality and vulnerability metrics.

Article Exploring the temporal variability of a food web using long-...

Thanks for your answer Pierre, Eloi, Nathan Olivier