Allometry and Dissipation of Ecological Flow Networks

An ecological flow network is a weighted directed graph in which the nodes are species, the edges are “who eats whom” relationships and the weights are rates of energy or nutrient transferred between species. Allometric scaling is a ubiquitous feature for flow systems such as river basins, vascular networks and food webs.. decreases, i.e., the relative importance of large species decreases. Moreover, the entire flow network is more decentralized. Therefore, network flow structure (allometry) and thermodynamic constraints (dissipation) are linked