Research Projects

Mutualistic plant-pollinator networks are facing an increasing extinction risk in a degrading environment. Moreover, human feedback builds in additional nonlinearities in mutualistic networks, ignoring which we may miss out on information essential to prevent species extinction. It remains to study if social norms can mitigate the potential of species extinction in such ecological networks envisioned as a coupled human-environment system. In particular, controlling species decline in real- world mutualistic plant-pollinator networks by adopting a human conservationist opinion - refraining from the use or misuse of pesticides and switching to their organic counterparts - can likely provide valuable insights. This project intends to take a new approach to study real-world mutualistic plant- pollinator networks and other ecological networks, e.g., food webs, under the framework of complex socio-ecological systems using the theories of dynamical systems and imitation dynamics (whereby individuals adopt either of two opinions).