Network parameters quantify loss of assemblage structure in human‐impacted lake ecosystems

Lake biodiversity is an incomplete indicator of exogenous forcing insofar as it ignores underlying deformations of community structure. Here, we seek a proxy for deformation in a network of diatom assemblages comprising 452 species in 273 lakes across China. We test predictions from network theory that nodes of similar type will tend to self-organize in an unstressed system to a positively skewed frequency distribution of nodal degree. The...