Interaction matrices as unifying tools for navigating ecological complexity.

Interaction matrices provide an analytically tractable way to summarize pairwise species impacts in ecological communities, but are criticized for oversimplifying complexity.

• Why it matters: The framework is repeatedly challenged because extensions to fix specific shortcomings often require more data and more complex analyses, leaving trade-offs unresolved.
• What they did: This review synthesizes the foundations and current methods for interaction matrices, proposing to treat them as uncertain and transient abstractions while drawing on complexity-science advances.
• The result: Embracing uncertainty and transience is argued to improve the framework’s unifying role, strengthening its value for unlocking ecological community dynamics.

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