Google works on a different web
Page ranking system inspires algorithm for predicting food webs’ vulnerability
By Susan Milius
Ecologists are taking a page, and its ranking, from Google.
A new algorithm inspired by the search engine works well for predicting which species losses will trigger the fastest collapse of a food web, says theoretical ecologist Stefano Allesina of the University of Chicago.
Food webs describe the pattern of what eats what in the neighborhood. If one kind of grass or bug, for example, disappears, creatures that fed on it would need to find something else for lunch. If they couldn’t, or if the alternative entrées went extinct too, then the loss could trigger a cascade of extinctions. Losing certain species can starve so many others that the whole food web unravels.