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Food webs, competition graphs, and the boxicity of ecological phase space

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Theory and Applications of Graphs

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Mathematics ((LNM,volume 642))

Abstract

Two species in an ecosystem compete if and only if they have intersecting ecological niches. Competition can be defined independently by using a food web for the ecosystem, and this notion of competition gives rise to a competition graph. This paper briefly describes the problem of representing the competition graph as an intersection graph of boxes (k-dimensional rectangles representing ecological niches) in Euclidean k-space and then discusses the class of graphs which arise as competition graphs of (acyclic) food webs.

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References

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© 1978 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Roberts, F.S. (1978). Food webs, competition graphs, and the boxicity of ecological phase space. In: Alavi, Y., Lick, D.R. (eds) Theory and Applications of Graphs. Lecture Notes in Mathematics, vol 642. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0070404

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0070404

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-08666-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-35912-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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