CONNECTANCE
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(1) |
| ID | ◀ 611 ▶ |
| Object type | Methodology or model |
The percentages of links , between the elements in a network .
The concept also appeared recently in ecology (A. FLOOD, 2001, p. 30-33). N. MARTINEZ introduced the “constant-connectance hypothesis according to which ”a particular balance of food-web complexity exists in nature…between everything eating everything, and everything not eating everything, and everything eating nothing (see R. WILLIAMS and N. MARTINEZ, 2000) “
Connectance is related to the global stability or instability of the network and is thus characteristic of its emerging complexity .
FLOOD comments: “Distributions of species, the World Wide Web and metabolic networks all seem to show robust self-organization phenomena . It is the global features of such webs that matter, not the individual characteristics of the units that make them up”(p. 33)
In ecological networks “a species (may go) extinct because of the removal of a closely connected neighbour”(Ibid.)
This can be obviously happen in economic and in social networks.
See also
Graphs, Power laws, Small world