Help me, please!!!!

Hello!

Today I sent a post, but as I didn't get any reply I decided to rewrite it once I urgently need a help from yours concerning the following doubts (I have to present a work about it today). Many thanks in advance!!!

Could you PLEASE, help me understand the following? - " Several food web metrics can provide insight into the dynamics of biomass partitioning and production in an ecosystem" (is it the same as : "Several quantitative analysis of food web can provide a clear understanding concerning the biomass partitioning and production in an ecosystem"?) Or does metrics here mean parameters? - "Food web" . I understand it as being a set of food chains. So food web is not a synonym of food chain, isn't it? - "Food webs have high heuristic value for ecological theory, and food web linkages ultimately determine the fate and flux of every population in an ecosystem, particularly upper trophic levels of fiscal importance. (here "ultimately determine" means "determine in the end" ? And "upper trophic levels of fiscal importance". What does it mean? Because I only found the word fiscal referring to money). - "At the least, food web characterization is required as an initial step in understanding an ecosystem". In spite of the preposition in that takes the verb 'To understand' ends in ing form, here because of the meaning of the sentence understanding is seen as a noun not a verb. Correct? - "Connectance and linkage hypotheses contradict whether or not an increasing S causes connectivity (C) to hyperbolically decline." (here I found that connectance means: "the fraction of all possible links that are realized in a network", but I couldn't find this word in any dictionary. So could you please, give me a synonym to replace it in the sentence above? ) - "... Lyapunov stability defines a local or 'neighborhood' equilibrium (think of a ball on top of a steep hill; it is not locally stable if pertubed)" (here what other word(s) can I use in the place of local or 'neighborhood' equilibrium? And does if pertubed, in this context, means to be taken out of inertia? - Finally "Northeast US Shelf ecosystem food web" , is it the same as: " Food web of the ecosystem of the shelf of Northeast of the United States"? Thank you so much Anon.

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