Reconstruction of plant-pollinator networks from observational data.
Ontology highlight
ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Young JG
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8222257 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Understanding the evolution of specialization in host plant use by pollinators is often complicated by variability in the ecological context of specialization. Flowering communities offer their pollinators varying numbers and proportions of floral resources, and the uniformity observed in these floral resources is, to some degree, due to shared ancestry. Here, we find that pollinators visit related plant species more so than expected by chance throughout 29 plant-pollinator networks of varying sizes, with "clade specialization" increasing with community size. As predicted, less versatile pollinators showed more clade specialization overall. We then asked whether this clade specialization varied with the ratio of pollinator species to plant species such that pollinators were changing their behavior when there was increased competition (and presumably a forced narrowing of the realized niche) by examining pollinators that were present in at least three of the networks. Surprisingly, we found little evidence that variation in clade specialization is caused by pollinator species changing their behavior in different community contexts, suggesting that clade specialization is observed when pollinators are either restricted in their floral choices due to morphological constraints or innate preferences. The resulting pollinator sharing between closely related plant species could result in selection for greater pollinator specialization.
| S-EPMC4203281 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundAnimal pollination is an important ecosystem function and service, ensuring both the integrity of natural systems and human well-being. Although many knowledge shortfalls remain, some high-quality data sets on biological interactions are now available. The development and adoption of standards for biodiversity data and metadata has promoted great advances in biological data sharing and aggregation, supporting large-scale studies and science-based public policies. However, these standards are currently not suitable to fully support interaction data sharing.ResultsHere we present a vocabulary of terms and a data model for sharing plant-pollinator interactions data based on the Darwin Core standard. The vocabulary introduces 48 new terms targeting several aspects of plant-pollinator interactions and can be used to capture information from different approaches and scales. Additionally, we provide solutions for data serialization using RDF, XML, and DwC-Archives and recommendations of existing controlled vocabularies for some of the terms. Our contribution supports open access to standardized data on plant-pollinator interactions.ConclusionsThe adoption of the vocabulary would facilitate data sharing to support studies ranging from the spatial and temporal distribution of interactions to the taxonomic, phenological, functional, and phylogenetic aspects of plant-pollinator interactions. We expect to fill data and knowledge gaps, thus further enabling scientific research on the ecology and evolution of plant-pollinator communities, biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and the development of public policies. The proposed data model is flexible and can be adapted for sharing other types of interactions data by developing discipline-specific vocabularies of terms.
| S-EPMC9154084 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundHabitat loss is one of the principal causes of the current pollinator decline. With agricultural intensification, increasing urbanisation is among the main drivers of habitat loss. Consequently studies focusing on pollinator community structure along urbanisation gradients have increased in recent years. However, few studies have investigated how urbanisation affects plant-pollinator interaction networks. Here we assessed modifications of plant-pollinator interactions along an urbanisation gradient based on the study of their morphological relationships.Methodology/principal findingsAlong an urbanisation gradient comprising four types of landscape contexts (semi-natural, agricultural, suburban, urban), we set up experimental plant communities containing two plant functional groups differing in their morphological traits ("open flowers" and "tubular flowers"). Insect visitations on these communities were recorded to build plant-pollinator networks. A total of 17 857 interactions were recorded between experimental plant communities and flower-visitors. The number of interactions performed by flower-visitors was significantly lower in urban landscape context than in semi-natural and agricultural ones. In particular, insects such as Syrphidae and solitary bees that mostly visited the open flower functional group were significantly impacted by urbanisation, which was not the case for bumblebees. Urbanisation also impacted the generalism of flower-visitors and we detected higher interaction evenness in urban landscape context than in agricultural and suburban ones. Finally, in urban context, these modifications lowered the potential reproductive success of the open flowers functional group.Conclusions/significanceOur findings show that open flower plant species and their specific flower-visitors are especially sensitive to increasing urbanisation. These results provide new clues to improve conservation measures within urbanised areas in favour of specialist flower-visitors. To complete this functional approach, studies using networks resolved to the species level along urbanised gradients would be required.
| S-EPMC3661593 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Fire is a major disturbance factor in many terrestrial ecosystems, leading to landscape transformation in fire-prone areas. Species in mutualistic interactions are often highly sensitive to disturbances like fire events, but the degree and complexity of their responses are unclear. We use bipartite insect-flower interaction networks across a recently burned landscape to explore how plant-pollinator interaction networks respond to a recent major fire event at the landscape level, and where fire refuges were present. We also investigate the effectiveness of these refuges at different elevations (valley to hilltop) for the conservation of displaced flower-visiting insects during fire events. Then, we explore how the degree of specialization of flower-visiting insects changes across habitats with different levels of fire impact. We did this in natural areas in the Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) biodiversity hotspot, which is species rich in plants and pollinators. Bees and beetles were the most frequent pollinators in interactions, followed by wasps and flies. Highest interaction activity was in the fire refuges and least in burned areas. Interactions also tracked flower abundance, which was highest in fire refuges in the valley and lowest in burned areas. Interactions consisted mostly of specialized flower visitors, especially in refuge areas. The interaction network and species specialization were lowest in burned areas. However, species common to at least two fire classes showed no significant difference in species specialization. We conclude that flower-rich fire refuges sustain plant-pollinator interactions, especially those involving specialized species, in fire-disturbed landscape. This may be an important shelter for specialized pollinator species at the time that the burned landscape goes through regrowth and succession as part of ecosystem recovery process after a major fire event.
| S-EPMC6540659 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Plant-pollinator systems are essential for ecosystem functioning, which calls for an understanding of the determinants of their robustness to environmental threats. Previous studies considering such robustness have focused mostly on species' connectivity properties, particularly their degree. We hypothesized that species' phenological attributes are at least as important as degree as determinants of network robustness. To test this, we combined dynamic modeling, computer simulation and analysis of data from 12 plant-pollinator networks with detailed information of topology of interactions as well as species' phenology of plant flowering and pollinator emergence. We found that phenological attributes are strong determinants of network robustness, a result consistent across the networks studied. Plant species persistence was most sensitive to increased larval mortality of pollinators that start earlier or finish later in the season. Pollinator persistence was especially sensitive to decreased visitation rates and increased larval mortality of specialists. Our findings suggest that seasonality of climatic events and anthropic impacts such as the release of pollutants is critical for the future integrity of terrestrial biodiversity.
| S-EPMC6173761 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The analysis of mutualistic networks has become a central tool in answering theoretical and applied questions regarding our understanding of ecological processes. Significant gaps in knowledge do however need to be bridged in order to effectively and accurately be able to describe networks. Main concern are the incorporation of species level information, accounting for sampling limitations and understanding linkage rules. Here I propose a simple method to combine plant pollinator effort-limited sampling with information about plant community to gain understanding of what drives linkage rules, while accounting for possible undetected linkages. I use hierarchical models to estimate the probability of detection of each plant-pollinator interaction in 12 Mediterranean plant-pollinator networks. As it is possible to incorporate plant traits as co-variables in the models, this method has the potential to be used for predictive purposes, such as identifying undetected links among existing species, as well as potential interactions with new plant species. Results show that pollinator detectability is very skewed and usually low. Nevertheless, 84% of the models are enhanced by the inclusion of co-variables, with flower abundance and inflorescence type being the most commonly retained co-variables. The predicted networks increase network Connectance by 13%, but not Nestedness, which is known to be robust to sampling effects. However, 46% of the pollinator interactions in the studied networks comprised a single observation and hence could not be modeled. The hierarchical modeling approach suggested here is highly flexible and can be used on binary or frequency networks, accommodate different observers or include collection day weather variables as confounding factors. An R script is provided for a rapid adoption of this method.
| S-EPMC3698228 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Species interaction networks, which play an important role in determining pathogen transmission and spread in ecological communities, can shift in response to agricultural landscape simplification. However, we know surprisingly little about how landscape simplification-driven changes in network structure impact epidemiological patterns. Here, we combine mathematical modelling and data from eleven bipartite plant-pollinator networks observed along a landscape simplification gradient to elucidate how changes in network structure shape disease dynamics. Our empirical data show that landscape simplification reduces pathogen prevalence in bee communities via increased diet breadth of the dominant species. Furthermore, our empirical data and theoretical model indicate that increased connectance reduces the likelihood of a disease outbreak and decreases variance in prevalence among bee species in the community, resulting in a dilution effect. Because infectious diseases are implicated in pollinator declines worldwide, a better understanding of how land use change impacts species interactions is therefore critical for conserving pollinator health.
| S-EPMC7340580 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Interaction networks are widely used as tools to understand plant-pollinator communities, and to examine potential threats to plant diversity and food security if the ecosystem service provided by pollinating animals declines. However, most networks to date are based on recording visits to flowers, rather than recording clearly defined effective pollination events. Here we provide the first networks that explicitly incorporate measures of pollinator effectiveness (PE) from pollen deposition on stigmas per visit, and pollinator importance (PI) as the product of PE and visit frequency. These more informative networks, here produced for a low diversity heathland habitat, reveal that plant-pollinator interactions are more specialized than shown in most previous studies. At the studied site, the specialization index [Formula: see text] was lower for the visitation network than the PE network, which was in turn lower than [Formula: see text] for the PI network. Our study shows that collecting PE data is feasible for community-level studies in low diversity communities and that including information about PE can change the structure of interaction networks. This could have important consequences for our understanding of threats to pollination systems.
| S-EPMC4571695 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Mutualistic plant-pollinator interactions play a key role in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem functioning. In a community, the combination of these interactions can generate emergent properties, e.g., robustness and resilience to disturbances such as fluctuations in populations and extinctions. Given that these systems are hierarchical and complex, environmental changes must have multiple levels of influence. In addition, changes in habitat quality and in the landscape structure are important threats to plants, pollinators and their interactions. However, despite the importance of these phenomena for the understanding of biological systems, as well as for conservation and management strategies, few studies have empirically evaluated these effects at the network level. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the influence of local conditions and landscape structure at multiple scales on the characteristics of plant-pollinator networks. This study was conducted in agri-natural lands in Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, Brazil. Pollinators were collected in 27 sampling units distributed orthogonally along a gradient of proportion of agriculture and landscape diversity. The Akaike information criterion was used to select models that best fit the metrics for network characteristics, comparing four hypotheses represented by a set of a priori candidate models with specific combinations of the proportion of agriculture, the average shape of the landscape elements, the diversity of the landscape and the structure of local vegetation. The results indicate that a reduction of habitat quality and landscape heterogeneity can cause species loss and decrease of networks nestedness. These structural changes can reduce robustness and resilience of plant-pollinator networks what compromises the reproductive success of plants, the maintenance of biodiversity and the pollination service stability. We also discuss the possible explanations for these relationships and the implications for landscape planning in agricultural areas.
| S-EPMC4391788 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The honeybee is the primary managed species worldwide for both crop pollination and honey production. Owing to beekeeping activity, its high relative abundance potentially affects the structure and functioning of pollination networks in natural ecosystems. Given that evidences about beekeeping impacts are restricted to observational studies of specific species and theoretical simulations, we still lack experimental data to test for their larger-scale impacts on biodiversity. Here we used a three-year field experiment in a natural ecosystem to compare the effects of pre- and post-establishment stages of beehives on the pollination network structure and plant reproductive success. Our results show that beekeeping reduces the diversity of wild pollinators and interaction links in the pollination networks. It disrupts their hierarchical structural organization causing the loss of interactions by generalist species, and also impairs pollination services by wild pollinators through reducing the reproductive success of those plant species highly visited by honeybees. High-density beekeeping in natural areas appears to have lasting, more serious negative impacts on biodiversity than was previously assumed.
| S-EPMC6423295 | biostudies-literature