A Model of Large-Scale Evolution of Complex Food Webs
A simple model of biological evolution of community food webs is introduced. This model is based on the niche model, which is known to generate model food webs that are very similar to empirical food webs. The networks evolve by speciation and extinction. Co-extinctions due to the loss of all prey species are found to play a major role in determining the longterm shape of the food webs. The central aim is to design the model such that the characteristic...