Mutualistic Networks Over Time: The Effects of Changing Floral Abundances on Plant- Pollinator Interactions
Abstract
Plant-pollinator networks have been shown to have a general structure that is constant across time and geographic range. However, the identities of the plants and pollinators within these networks and the ways in which they interact are highly variable. We investigated a possible mechanism for this variability: niche breadth changes driven by changing levels of intraspecific competition. If intraspecific competition can partially explain changing network composition, we can use it to predict future ecosystem changes and help maintain ecosystem and species stability in a changing climate. We examined the effects of changing floral abundance on niche breadth throughout one growing season. We predicted that increasing floral abundance, accompanied by greater intraspecific competition, would increase plant species niche breadth above that expected due to increased abundance of inflorescences alone; probabilistically species will interact with the most abundant species the most even if abundance were the only factor. We found that the pollination networks in the sites investigated are all highly nested and found evidence that a species' niche breadth varies across sites (as predicted by the literature). The data do not currently support the claim that niche breadth increases with increasing abundance due to increased intraspecific competition; finer pollinator species identification may reveal further trends in the data. Once pollinators are identified to species, the analysis will be redone and the hypothesis revisited.
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References (44)
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