• intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    They are after humans in the food web.

    The food web is directed but not acyclic, meaning that arrows can point in a loop.

    An example of a directed, acyclic “web” (technically a graph), would he books being published that quote other, previously published books.

    Another is (ideally) the library dependencies of a codebase. If you end up with a loop in your dependency graph your package manager will probably fail.

    An example of a non-directed graph is the covid contact data that our phones were collecting if we opted in during the pandemic. If I was close to you, you were close to me. It basically means if we drew you and I as dots on paper, it would be a line connecting us not an arrow.

    The food web is directed (there is the eater and the eaten) but not acyclic. I can eat a bear, and the bear can eat me, which would be represented not as one line, but as two arrows pointing to and fro.

    • Bakachu@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Great explanation of the concept of a food web. Grew up only knowing the food chain as well. Still kind of fuzzy on the rules for direction with certain animal pairs and whether it’s based on predation capability or something else.

        • Bakachu@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yep saw that one and another with a deer eating a bird. So I think there’s new categories for animals now too on what they eat. Instead of carnivores, omnivores, and herbivores. There’s obligate carnivores and opportunistic carnivores. Apparently even pandas would kill for some protein if given the opportunity.

          Gonna be a 3-D food web once we get all the new science rules settled.