Google Algorithm Predicts When Species Will Go Extinct

Biologists have figured out the most efficient way to destroy an ecosystem — and it’s based on the Google search algorithm.

Scientists have long known that the extinction of key species in a food web can cause collapse of the entire system, but the vast number of interactions between species makes it difficult to guess which animals and plants are the most important.

Now, computational biologists have adapted the Google search algorithm, called PageRank, to the problem of predicting ecological collapse, and they’ve created a startlingly accurate model.

Using a modified version of PageRank, the researchers were able to identify which species extinctions within a food web would lead to biggest chain-reaction of species death.

Unlike previous solutions to the coextinction problem, the Google solution takes into account not only the number of connections between species, but also their relative importance. In other words, grass is important because it’s eaten by gazelles, and gazelles are important because they’re eaten by lions.

The scientists have found that the importance of a species can be connected to the amount of matter that flows to it. If species eat a lot of things, and a lot of things eat them, they tend to be important. Previous solutions to the problem tended to underestimate the importance of species that are lower on the food chain, and hopes are that the new solution will encourage conservation biologists to take a broader view of species extinctions.

Original article here.