Fig. 3

The importance of social–ecological network closure. Values shown are the coefficients (and SEs) of social–ecological network closure (shaded) and other key parameters from five multilevel exponential random graph models (ERGMs) fit to empirical social–ecological networks representing each of the five reef fishing communities studied (sites A–E). Shapes and colors in the conceptual graphical depictions follow Fig. 1. L indicates an actor in the social network who is also a leader, and the tie linking this leader to another social actor demonstrates the potential for leaders to have more ties on average than others; a indicates an actor in the social network who uses hypothetical landing site a, and the tie linking this actor to another whom also uses landing site a demonstrates the potential homophily effect on landing site. Note that the depictions for centralization and closure in the social network are only representative and do not explicitly capture the alternating nature of the specific parameters included in the model (termed ASA and ATA in MPNet; Methods, Supplementary Methods). Full models also included controls for activity in each landing site where a residual analysis suggested that fishers may be more active in forming and maintaining ties than would be expected by chance alone (Supplementary Table 5). Asterisk (*) indicates significance at P < 0.05