Yu, J., 2020. Disentangling the core–periphery structure in marine reserve networks based on a genetic algorithm. In: Yang, D.F. and Wang, H. (eds.), Recent Advances in Marine Geology and Environmental Oceanography. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 108, pp. 250–253. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208.

Various methods have been proposed in the literature to detect an optimal partitioning of marine reserve networks into core and periphery subsets. However, these methods has been approached using approximate procedures, such as genetic algorithms, that do not guarantee an optimal bipartition. In this paper, a genetic algorithm is presented to detect the core–periphery structure in marine reserve networks, and the effect of the algorithm is analyzed. First, it presents mathematically the optimization of the error score for the core–periphery model, which is an improved expression of optimization function. Moreover, the genetic algorithm was selected to afford a guarantee of an optimal bipartition, because the genetic algorithm as a significative method is beneficial in jumping from local optimizations.