Strong connectivity in real directed networks

In many real, directed networks, the strongly connected component of nodes which are mutually reachable is very small. This does not fit with current theory, based on random graphs, according to which strong connectivity depends on mean degree and degree–degree correlations. And it has important implications for other properties of real networks and the dynamical behavior of many complex systems. We find that strong connectivity depends crucially on the extent to which the network has an overall direction or hierarchical ordering—a property measured by trophic coherence. Using percolation theory, we find the critical point separating weakly and strongly connected regimes and confirm our results on many real-world networks, including ecological, neural, trade, and social networks. We show that the connectivity structure can be disrupted with minimal effort by a targeted attack on edges which run counter to the overall direction. This means that many dynamical processes on networks can depend significantly on a small fraction of edges.