Cargando…

Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach

Understanding how ecological communities are structured is a major goal in ecology. Ecological networks representing interaction patterns among species have become a powerful tool to capture the mechanisms underlying plant-animal assemblages. However, these networks largely do not account for inter-...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Rumeu, Beatriz, Sheath, Danny J., Hawes, Joseph E., Ings, Thomas C.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147118/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30245938
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5618
_version_ 1783356513575763968
author Rumeu, Beatriz
Sheath, Danny J.
Hawes, Joseph E.
Ings, Thomas C.
author_facet Rumeu, Beatriz
Sheath, Danny J.
Hawes, Joseph E.
Ings, Thomas C.
author_sort Rumeu, Beatriz
collection PubMed
description Understanding how ecological communities are structured is a major goal in ecology. Ecological networks representing interaction patterns among species have become a powerful tool to capture the mechanisms underlying plant-animal assemblages. However, these networks largely do not account for inter-individual variability and thus may be limiting our development of a clear mechanistic understanding of community structure. In this study, we develop a new individual-trait based approach to examine the importance of individual plant and pollinator functional size traits (pollinator thorax width and plant nectar holder depth) in mutualistic networks. We performed hierarchical cluster analyses to group interacting individuals into classes, according to their similarity in functional size. We then compared the structure of bee-flower networks where nodes represented either species identity or trait sets. The individual trait-based network was almost twice as nested as its species-based equivalent and it had a more symmetric linkage pattern resulting from of a high degree of size-matching. In conclusion, we show that by constructing individual trait-based networks we can reveal important patterns otherwise difficult to observe in species-based networks and thus improve our understanding of community structure. We therefore recommend using both trait-based and species-based approaches together to develop a clearer understanding of the properties of ecological networks.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6147118
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2018
publisher PeerJ Inc.
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-61471182018-09-21 Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach Rumeu, Beatriz Sheath, Danny J. Hawes, Joseph E. Ings, Thomas C. PeerJ Ecology Understanding how ecological communities are structured is a major goal in ecology. Ecological networks representing interaction patterns among species have become a powerful tool to capture the mechanisms underlying plant-animal assemblages. However, these networks largely do not account for inter-individual variability and thus may be limiting our development of a clear mechanistic understanding of community structure. In this study, we develop a new individual-trait based approach to examine the importance of individual plant and pollinator functional size traits (pollinator thorax width and plant nectar holder depth) in mutualistic networks. We performed hierarchical cluster analyses to group interacting individuals into classes, according to their similarity in functional size. We then compared the structure of bee-flower networks where nodes represented either species identity or trait sets. The individual trait-based network was almost twice as nested as its species-based equivalent and it had a more symmetric linkage pattern resulting from of a high degree of size-matching. In conclusion, we show that by constructing individual trait-based networks we can reveal important patterns otherwise difficult to observe in species-based networks and thus improve our understanding of community structure. We therefore recommend using both trait-based and species-based approaches together to develop a clearer understanding of the properties of ecological networks. PeerJ Inc. 2018-09-17 /pmc/articles/PMC6147118/ /pubmed/30245938 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5618 Text en ©2018 Rumeu et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Rumeu, Beatriz
Sheath, Danny J.
Hawes, Joseph E.
Ings, Thomas C.
Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach
title Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach
title_full Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach
title_fullStr Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach
title_full_unstemmed Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach
title_short Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach
title_sort zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6147118/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30245938
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5618
work_keys_str_mv AT rumeubeatriz zoomingintoplantflowervisitornetworksanindividualtraitbasedapproach
AT sheathdannyj zoomingintoplantflowervisitornetworksanindividualtraitbasedapproach
AT hawesjosephe zoomingintoplantflowervisitornetworksanindividualtraitbasedapproach
AT ingsthomasc zoomingintoplantflowervisitornetworksanindividualtraitbasedapproach