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. 2023 Oct 20;9(11):e21076.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e21076. eCollection 2023 Nov.

Evolving community structure in the international pesticide trade networks

Jian-An Li  1 , Li Wang  2   3 , Wen-Jie Xie  1   3 , Wei-Xing Zhou  1   3   4
Affiliations

Evolving community structure in the international pesticide trade networks

Jian-An Li et al. Heliyon. .

Abstract

The statistical properties of the international trade networks of all commodities as a whole have been extensively studied. However, the international trade networks of individual commodities often behave differently. Due to the importance of pesticides in agricultural production and food security, we investigated the evolving community structure in the international pesticide trade networks (iPTNs) of five categories from 2007 to 2018. We reveal that the community structures in the undirected and directed iPTNs exhibit regional patterns. However, the regional patterns are very different for undirected and directed networks and for different categories of pesticides. Moreover, the community structure is more stable in the directed iPTNs than in the undirected iPTNs. We also extract the intrinsic community blocks for the directed international trade networks of each pesticide category. It is found that the largest intrinsic community block is the most stable, appears in every pesticide category, and contains important economies (Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal) in Europe. Other important and stable intrinsic community blocks are Canada and the United States in North America, Argentina and Brazil in South America, and Australia and New Zealand in Oceania. These results suggest that, in the international trade of pesticides, geographic distance and the complementarity of important and adjacent economies are significant factors.

Keywords: Community structure; Econophysics; International pesticide trade network; Intrinsic community block; Regional pattern; Temporal network.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Yearly evolution of the per level codelengths for modules (a) and leaf nodes (b) for the undirected international trade networks of insecticides (380891), fungicides (380892), herbicides (380893), disinfectants (380894), and rodenticides and other similar products (380899) from 2007 to 2018. (c)Evolution of the number of communities for the undirected international trade networks of insecticides (380891), fungicides (380892), herbicides (380893), disinfectants (380894), and rodenticides and other similar products (380899) from 2007 to 2018. (d) Evolution of the modularity for the undirected international trade networks of insecticides (380891), fungicides (380892), herbicides (380893), disinfectants (380894), and rodenticides and other similar products (380899) from 2007 to 2018.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Community evolution of the undirected iPTNs of insecticides (380891) from 2007 (Panel (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Yearly evolution of the per level codelengths for modules (a) and leaf nodes (b) in the directed international trade networks of insecticides (380891), fungicides (380892), herbicides (380893), disinfectants (380894), and rodenticides and other similar products (380899) from 2007 to 2018. Evolution of the number of communities (a) and non-trivial top communities (b) for the directed international trade networks of insecticides (380891), fungicides (380892), herbicides (380893), disinfectants (380894), and rodenticides and other similar products (380899) from 2007 to 2018.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Evolution of the modularity for the directed international trade networks of insecticides (380891), fungicides (380892), herbicides (380893), disinfectants (380894), and rodenticides and other similar products (380899) from 2007 to 2018.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Community evolution of the directed iPTNs of insecticides (380891) from 2007 (Panel (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)). For better visibility, the non-trivial communities containing less than 5 economies and trivial communities are merged to C0.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Normalized mutual information NMI(t − 1,t) between the partitions of two successive iPTNs. (a) undirected iPTNs, (b) directed iPTNs.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Intrinsic community blocks in the temporal directed iPTNs from 2007 to 2018 of insecticides (380891, a and b), fungicides (380892, c and d), herbicides (380893, e and f), disinfectants (380894, g and h), and rodenticides and other similar products (380899, i and j) in the colored map (left panel) and in colored networks (right panel). The node color of an intrinsic community block is the same in both panels.
Figure A.1
Figure A.1
Community evolution of the undirected iPTNs of fungicides (380892) from 2007 (Panel (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)).
Figure A.2
Figure A.2
Community evolution of the undirected iPTNs of herbicides (380893) from 2007 (Panel (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)).
Figure A.3
Figure A.3
Community evolution of the undirected iPTNs of disinfectants (380894) from 2007 (Panel (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)).
Figure A.4
Figure A.4
Community evolution of the undirected iPTNs of rodenticides and other similar products (380899) from 2007 (Panel (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)).
Figure B.1
Figure B.1
Community evolution of the directed iPTNs of fungicides (380892) from 2007 (Pane (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)). For better visibility, the non-trivial communities containing less than 5 economies and trivial communities are merged to C0.
Figure B.2
Figure B.2
Community evolution of the directed iPTNs of herbicides (380893) from 2007 (Pane (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)). For better visibility, the non-trivial communities containing less than 5 economies and trivial communities are merged to C0.
Figure B.3
Figure B.3
Community evolution of the directed iPTNs of disinfectants (380894) from 2007 (Pane (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)). For better visibility, the non-trivial communities containing less than 5 economies and trivial communities are merged to C0.
Figure B.4
Figure B.4
Community evolution of the iPTNs of rodenticides and other similar products (380899) from 2007 (Pane (a)) to 2018 (Panel (l)). For better visibility, the non-trivial communities containing less than 5 economies and trivial communities are merged to C0.
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