Fig. 4: Nature-nurture model fitting across network evolution.

The observed degree distribution P(k) (blue) and degree-ratio distribution P(η) (red) in A–C Academia (a non-social network) and D–F Zhihu (a social network) are captured at different timestamped stages. Solid and dashed lines represent fits based on Eqs. (2) and (3) of the nature–nurture model, with AICc provided (Supplementary Table 5). The parameters N and T match the number of nodes and links in the empirical data at each evolutionary stage (Supplementary Table 4). The other fitting parameters, \({\omega }_{\max }\), α, and b are set according to the optimal values obtained in Supplementary Table 2.