3.4 Community detection.
We identified 5 trading communities with a modularity value of 0.338. A
strong community structure is usually in the range of 0.3–0.7 (Newman
and Girvan, 2004); a high proportion (92.29%) of intra-community
movements and a lower proportion (7.71%) of intercommunity ones,
represented as the few connecting lines between communities coloured in
the circular plot (Table 4, Fig. 7B).
Table 4. Number of trade connections within and between trade
communities in Ecuador (2017–2019).