Figure 3: Priorities for managing the Alaskan food web using different indices/approaches.

Optimal A (a) and B (b) show the optimal prioritization of species for two different assignments of species extinction risk and strength of interaction between species, where species extinction risk (drawn from a Beta distribution with α=2 and β=8) and strength of interaction between species (drawn from a lognormal distribution with log-mean—3.0 and log-s.d.—1.5. Optimal A (a), Return-On-Investment (c), Betweenness Centrality (d), Keystone Index (e), and Cascading Extinction (f) show the prioritization under each of these approaches for the same assignments of species extinction risk and strength of interaction between species. Prioritization rank is indicated by node radius; larger radius equals higher priority.