Category: Ecology

Summary: Testing whether intermediate concentration of inter-community bridges maximizes cross-community avalanches in modular Bak-Sneppen dynamics.

Bak-Sneppen evolution models punctuated adaptive change through avalanche-like updates, and modular network structure can confine or spread those cascades. This experiment asks whether holding the total number of inter-community links fixed is enough to predict spreading, or whether the concentration of those bridge endpoints matters in its own right.

The simulation runs Bak-Sneppen dynamics on modular networks while varying how strongly the bridge edges are concentrated onto a small subset of nodes. It then measures whether intermediate concentration best supports avalanches that penetrate multiple communities, rather than either diffuse placement or extreme hub concentration.

That isolates a structural control knob that standard modularity studies often do not separate out. The result speaks to whether connectivity budget alone determines transport between communities.

Method: Repeated Bak-Sneppen simulations on modular networks with controlled bridge-endpoint concentration and fixed inter-community edge budget.

What is measured: Cross-community avalanche penetration, avalanche size distribution, dependence on bridge concentration, and support for an interior optimum.