"Scientists have long known that the extinction of key species in a food web can cause collapse of the entire system, but the vast number of interactions between species makes it difficult to guess which animals and plants are the most important. Now, computational biologists have adapted the Google search algorithm, called PageRank, to the problem of predicting ecological collapse, and they’ve created a startlingly accurate model."
Really? What ecosystem or systems have collapsed to verify the model?
Oh, well. Like most things of or from the intertubes, over-hyped, self-importance is preeminent.