Table 1.

Species interaction processes, the corresponding motifs and ERGM configurations. The names of the ERGM configurations as they are called in MPNET are inside parentheses. Note that the ERGM configurations used here are configurations that consist of a series of simpler configurations, the ‘alternate’ version of a configuration that still captures the same type of underlying process as in the more bare-bone configuration, see further [12]. The reason for using the alternate configurations lies in the degree heterogeneity: in empirical networks triangles tend to clump together instead of being evenly distributed throughout the network, thus alternating configurations improve the ability of ERGM to reproduce empirical network structure improves significantly [12,13].