Abstract:

Background & Aims: At the landscape scale, multiple local communities are distributed along environmental gradients, and these local communities are interconnected through species dispersal, together forming metacommunity. When considering both the species composition and interspecific interactions of metacommunity, the concept of metanetwork emerges. With methods in network analysis, metanetwork illustrate the distribution of species interactions across multiple communities. The research scale and numerous network metrics corresponding to different data types often confuse researchers.
Progress: We begin by categorizing and organizing network metrics, and then proceed to differentiate between global and local network metrics. This provides explanations for their application scenarios, computation processes, and ecological significance, while also discussing the impact of sampling intensity on these metrics and exploring their relationships. We introduce the network β-diversity metrics that are computed based on interaction diversity. Subsequently, we outline the statistical inference approaches used in network analysis, incorporating both individual network metrics and network β-diversity metrics. Finally, we provide a summary of the recent research trends, which has shifted from metacommunity to metanetwork.
Prospects: We stress the significance of taking into account the influence of phylogenetic relationships on network composition and interactions in research papers. Multilayer networks offer the capability to represent community structures at a wider scale of species interactions, thus revealing more comprehensive community dynamics. Consistency in the analytical approach of metanetworks is vital for facilitating comparisons across diverse studies.

Key words: ecological networks, metacommunity, metanetwork, network metrics, network β-diversity