News Ecosystems

Google works on a different web

Page ranking system inspires algorithm for predicting food webs’ vulnerability

By Susan Milius

- More than 2 years ago

Ecologists are taking a page, and its ranking, from Google.

BYTING THE DUST Species preying on their neighbors in the real world form food webs a bit like the World Wide Web. Researchers have adapted Google’s system for ranking Web pages to develop a new way to predict which small groups of important species would crash their food web if they went extinct.