Abstract
Distance between habitats may impact the composition and corresponding interactions between trophic levels. Mutualistic networks, such as those of plants and pollinators tend to have a core set of properties that often relate to the resilience of the community, or the ability of the community to retain function and structure after a disturbance. Furthermore, network structure is highly dependent on the number of specialists and generalists; however, it is unclear how different groups of species with various life-history strategies influence network structure. In this study, we evaluated how the composition of plants and pollinators within 16 oak-savanna sites changed across a latitudinal gradient. In addition, we evaluated how the abundance of different groups of plants and pollinators affected network metrics related to resilience. We found that the composition of plants and pollinators varied between ecoregions, while pollinator composition further varied with habitat characteristics. Network metrics displayed no spatial pattern but were related to the abundance of several pollinator groups. Above-ground nesting insects had a positive relationship with nestedness and a negative relationship with modularity, while predatory larvae had a negative relationship with modularity. Thus, above-ground nesting insects and predatory larvae could be expected to increase network resilience. This study emphasizes how spatial scales can influence species compositions, which in turn affects the structure of interactions in the community with implications for resilience.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Sandra Gillespie, Melissa Guzman, and Allison Dennert for commenting on the manuscript, and Emily Merlo for assistance with field work. Additionally, we thank Daniel Greenburg, Collin Bailey, and Philina English for statistical advice. We are grateful to all the land managers for giving us permission to conduct our study in their sites and Terry Griswold and Jason Gibbs for assistance with some insect identification. This project was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC; R311 614; Discovery Grant to EE) with partial funding from the Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies program at Simon Fraser University (to TK).
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TK and EE conceived, designed, and executed this study and wrote the manuscript. TK analyzed the data and created the figures and tables.
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Communicated by Anne Worley.
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Kelly, T., Elle, E. Effects of community composition on plant–pollinator interaction networks across a spatial gradient of oak-savanna habitats. Oecologia 193, 211–223 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04661-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04661-5