Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2021

DOI

10.1038/s41467-021-25155-9

Publication Title

Nature Communications

Volume

12

Pages

4935 (1-14)

Abstract

The study of connectivity patterns in networks has brought novel insights across diverse fields ranging from neurosciences to epidemic spreading or climate. In this context, betweenness centrality has demonstrated to be a very effective measure to identify nodes that act as focus of congestion, or bottlenecks, in the network. However, there is not a way to define betweenness outside the network framework. By analytically linking dynamical systems and network theory, we provide a trajectory-based formulation of betweenness, called Lagrangian betweenness, as a function of Lyapunov exponents. This extends the concept of betweenness beyond the context of network theory relating hyperbolic points and heteroclinic connections in any dynamical system to the structural bottlenecks of the network associated with it. Using modeled and observational velocity fields, we show that such bottlenecks are present and surprisingly persistent in the oceanic circulation across different spatio-temporal scales and we illustrate the role of these areas in driving fluid transport over vast oceanic regions. Analyzing plankton abundance data from the Kuroshio region of the Pacific Ocean, we find significant spatial correlations between measures of diversity and betweenness, suggesting promise for ecological applications.

Rights

This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original authors and the source, provide a link to the creative commons license, and indicate if changes are made.

Data Availability

Article states: "The data-assimilation product used for the Adriatic Sea is available at https://doi.org/10.25423/MEDSEA_REANALYSIS_PHYS_006_004. The altimetry product used for the Adriatic Sea and Kerguelen region is available at https://www.aviso.altimetry.fr. The velocity field used in the north Pacific region is the GLORYS12V1 product (GLOBAL_REANALYSIS_PHY_001_030) provided by E.U. Copernicus Marine Environment Service Information website. The microscopy data are available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.819110. The sequences data used have been deposited in GenBank (accession nos. KT012724 to KT013052). The codes used to compute Lagrangian betweenness are available online at https://github.com/serjaaa/lagrangian-betweenness."

Original Publication Citation

Ser-Giacomi, E., Baudena, A., Rossi, V., Follows, M., Clayton, S., Vasile, R., López, C., & Hernández-García, E. (2021). Lagrangian betweenness as a measure of bottlenecks in dynamical systems with oceanographic examples. Nature Communications, 12, 1-14, Article 4935. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25155-9

ORCID

0000-0001-7473-4873 (Clayton)

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