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When species become extinct, what happens in the ecosystem? Using a mix of children’s games and complex computer science applications, Stefano Allesina is working to understand ecological trends over time. Allesina, of the University of Chicago, made a splash in 2009 when he and his colleagues adapted Google’s PageRank algorithm, which prioritizes the order of its search listings, to describe species’ connections to their ecosystems and gauge the impact of extinctions. The concept is simple: a Web page is important if other pages link to it; a species is important if others species eat it. In his latest research, Allesina is using the game Rock, Paper, Scissors to understand and illustrate how competing species survive and coexist. Hear from him on what he’s discovered and why he’s chosen the tools he uses.
