Network ecology is an emerging field that allows researchers to conceptualize and analyze ecological networks and their dynamics. Here, we focus on the dynamics of ecological networks in response to environmental changes. Specifically, we formalize how network topologies constrain the dynamics of ecological systems into a unifying framework in network ecology that we refer to as the “ecological network dynamics framework”. This framework stresses that the interplay between species interaction networks and the spatial layout of habitat patches is key to identifying which network properties (number and weights of nodes and links). Determining how effective ecological networks change through space and time can help reveal their complex dynamics in a changing world. We used directed graphlets to analyze changes in species interaction networks from a forest site (forest web), an edge site (edge web), and both sites together (meta web) at two time periods.

Species interactions in food-webs from forested landscapes were extracted from a database online and converted into directed binary interactions.