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Niche partitioning due to adaptive foraging reverses effects of nestedness and connectance on pollination network stability

From Complex Time
Category
General Reference
author-supplied keywords
Adaptive behaviour
community stability
consumer-resource interactions
mechanistic models
mutualistic networks
population dynamics
keywords
authors
Fernanda S. Valdovinos
Berry J. Brosi
Heather M. Briggs
Pablo Moisset de Espanés
Rodrigo Ramos-Jiliberto
Neo D. Martinez
title
Niche partitioning due to adaptive foraging reverses effects of nestedness and connectance on pollination network stability
type
generic
year
2016
source
Ecology letters
pages
1277-1286
volume
19
issue
10
publisher
Blackwell Publishing Ltd
link
https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/efbe8497-7cdd-3ad8-9eef-219db4930c61/(Error!"Error!" is not a number.)

Abstract

Much research debates whether properties of ecological networks such as nestedness and con- nectance stabilise biological communities while ignoring key behavioural aspects of organisms within these networks. Here, we computationally assess how adaptive foraging (AF) behaviour interacts with network architecture to determine the stability of plant–pollinator networks. We find that AF reverses negative effects of nestedness and positive effects of connectance on the sta- bility of the networks by partitioning the niches among species within guilds. This behaviour enables generalist pollinators to preferentially forage on the most specialised of their plant part- ners which increases the pollination services to specialist plants and cedes the resources of general- ist plants to specialist pollinators. We corroborate these behavioural preferences with intensive field observations of bee foraging. Our results show that incorporating key organismal behaviours with well-known biological mechanisms such as consumer-resource interactions into the analysis of ecological networks may greatly improve our understanding of complex ecosystems.

Counts

Citation count From Scopus. Refreshed every 5 days.
80
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Identifiers

  • doi: 10.1111/ele.12664 (Google search)
  • issn: 14610248
  • sgr: 84991268076
  • isbn: 1461-0248
  • pmid: 27600659
  • scopus: 2-s2.0-84991268076
  • pui: 612750817

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