DOI: 10.5061/dryad.brv15dvgc
title: The topology of spatial networks affects stability in experimental metacommunities

description: Understanding the drivers of community stability has been a central goal
 in ecology. Traditionally the emphasis has been placed on studying the
 effects of biotic interactions on community variability, and less is
 understood about how the spatial configuration of habitats promotes or
 hinders metacommunity stability. To test the effects of contrasting
 spatial configurations on metacommunity stability, I designed
 metacommunities with patches connected as random or scale-free networks.
 In these microcosms, two prey and one protist predator dispersed, and I
 evaluated community persistence, tracked biomass variations, and measured
 synchrony between local communities and their neighbors. After 30
 generations, scale-free metacommunities had lower global biomass
 variability and higher persistence, suggesting higher stability. At the
 local scale, patches in scale-free metacommunities showed a positive
 relationship between variability and patch connectivity, indicating higher
 stability in isolated communities. No clear relationship was observed in
 random networks.  These results suggest the increased
 heterogeneity in connectivity of scale-free networks favors the prevalence
 of isolated patches in the metacommunity, which likely act as refugia
 against competition—the most dominant interaction in this system—resulting
 in higher global stability. These results highlight the importance of
 accounting for network topology in the study of spatial dynamics.
description: # The topology of spatial networks affects stability in experimental
 metacommunities
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.brv15dvgc](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.brv15dvgc) Biomass data was used to calculate the coefficient of variation (CV) at the meta-community level and local community level. ## File structure ### **biomass\_variation.csv: raw community biomass** * net_name: identification of network-level replicates * network: type of network topology * plate: identification of meta community-level replicates * day: time ### **cv\_per\_spp.csv: CV calculated separately for each species at the meta-community level** * net_name: identification of network-level replicates * network: type of network topology * plate: identification of meta community-level replicates * p_cv: CV of *Paramecium tetraurelia* * pb_cv: CV of *Paramecium bursaria* * dil_cv: CV of *Dileptus anser* ### **data\_for\_local\_cv.csv: CV of biomass calculated at the local community level (i.e., patch)** * net_name: identification of network-level replicates * network: type of network topology * plate: identification of meta community-level replicates * node: local habitat patch * degree: patch metric describing the number of direct neighbors connected to the focal patch * closenesscent: the measure of closeness centrality. This patch metric describes how "central" a habitat patch is, calculated on the reciprocal of the average shortest path length between the focal patch and all other patches in the network. * local_cv: calculation of the CV of biomass in that focal patch throughout the experiment. ### **MC-wide\_CV.csv: CV of community biomass at the meta-community level** * net_name: identification of network-level replicates * network: type of network topology * plate: identification of meta community-level replicates * global: CV of community biomass at the meta-community level ### **Persistence.csv: persistence data for the three species at the meta-community (plate) level** * net_name: identification of network-level replicates * network: type of network topology * plate: identification of meta-community-level replicates * species: species identity * days_until_ext: number of days that species was recorded as present in the experiment * full_comm_span: number of days where all three species were recorded as present in the experiment ## Sharing/Access information NA ## Code/Software NA