Breaking the spell of nestedness

Understand

Mutualistic interactions, which are beneficial for both interacting species, are recurrently present in ecosystems.

• Observations of natural systems showed that, if we draw mutualistic relationships as binary links between species, the resulting bipartite network of interactions displays a widespread particular ordering called nestedness.
• On the other hand, theoretical works have shown that a nested structure has a positive impact on a number of relevant features ranging from species coexistence to a higher structural stability of communities and biodiversity.
• However, how nestedness emerges and what are its determinants, are still open challenges that have led to multiple debates to date.