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Summary: of large-scale failures in cooperative networks8
.
Mutualismfacilitatesgreaterbiodiversity.Butit
also creates the potential for many contingent
species to go extinct, particularly if large, well-
connected generalists (for example, certain
large banks) disappear.
Moreover, as reported by Bastolla et al.1
, a
strong mutualistic interaction between two
species (excessively favourable selective terms)
can move the system into a strong mutualis-
tic regime; this will destabilize other weakly
mutualistic species groups whose interaction
strengthfallsbelowsomethreshold.Overtime,
only the strong cooperators survive, and the
weakly cooperating species groups go extinct.
This stylized behaviour of simple mutualistic
networks possibly applies to other domains, in
which strong cooperation between two agents
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