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Pollinator interaction flexibility across scales affects patch colonization and occupancy

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 5, pages 787–793 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Global change alters ecological communities and may disrupt ecological interactions and the provision of ecosystem functions. As ecological communities respond to global change, species may either go locally extinct or form novel interactions. To date, few studies have assessed how flexible species are in their interaction patterns, mainly due to the scarcity of data spanning long time series. Using a ten-year species-level dataset on the assembly of mutualistic networks from the Central Valley in California, we test whether interaction flexibility affects pollinators’ colonization and persistence and their resulting habitat occupancy in a highly modified landscape. We propose three metrics of interaction flexibility associated with different scales of organization within ecological communities and explore which species’ traits affect them. Our results provide empirical evidence linking species’ ability to colonize habitat patches across a landscape to the role they play in networks. Phenological breadth and body size had contrasting effects on interaction flexibility. We demonstrate the relationship between mutualistic networks and species’ ability to colonize and persist in the landscape, suggesting interaction flexibility as a potential mechanism for communities to maintain ecosystem function despite changes in community composition.

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Fig. 1: Diagram representing the different scales for which we calculated interaction flexibility.
Fig. 2: Partner, role and structural flexibility for the 31 species seen more than three times at a site included in the analyses.
Fig. 3: The effect of partner variability, role variability and structural variability on persistence (solid line), colonization (dashed line) and proportion of occupied patches (dotted line) across the landscape.

Data availability

Data describing plant–pollinator interactions as well as data generated in this study are available in Github (https://github.com/Magaiarsa/intFlex) and Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/4485996#.YE9dzGRKhhF).

Code availability

Code is deposited in Github (https://github.com/Magaiarsa/intFlex) and Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/4485996#.YE9dzGRKhhF).

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Acknowledgements

We thank M. C. Hutchinson, A. P. A. Assis, G. Burin, J. Diez, J. Gillung, P. R. Guimarães Jr and B. B. Mora for their thoughtful discussions and comments on the manuscript, J. Lefcheck for his assistance with the structural equation models and A. R. Cirtwill for discussions regarding motif analysis. We also thank the growers and landowners that allowed us to work on their property and greatly appreciate the identification assistance of expert taxonomists J. Gibbs, M. Hauser, J. Pawelek and the late R. Thorp. This work was supported by funding from the Army Research Office (W911NF-11-1-0361 to C.K.), the Natural Resources Conservation Service (CIG-69-3A75-12-253, CIG-69-3A75-9-142, CIG-68-9104-6-101 and WLF-69-7482-6-277 to the Xerces Society), the National Science Foundation (DEB-0919128 to C.K.), The US Department of Agriculture (USDA-NIFA 2012-51181-20105 to Michigan State University) and a USDA NIFA fellowship to L.C.P. M.P.G. acknowledges funding provided by the University of California Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship from UC Riverside.

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Author notes

  1. Marília Palumbo Gaiarsa

    Present address: Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

    Marília Palumbo Gaiarsa & Lauren C. Ponisio

  2. Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Claire Kremen

  3. Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, Department of Zoology and Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Claire Kremen

  4. Institute of Ecology and Evolution, Department of Biology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA

    Lauren C. Ponisio

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Contributions

M.P.G. and L.C.P. designed the analysis. C.K. designed the field study. L.C.P. and C.K. collected data. M.P.G. and L.C.P. developed the metrics for interaction flexibility, which M.P.G. implemented. L.C.P. wrote the first version of the occupancy models, which M.P.G. modified and refined for this study. M.P.G. wrote the manuscript, performed analyses and prepared the figures. All authors contributed to revisions.

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Correspondence to Marília Palumbo Gaiarsa.

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Peer review information Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Gita Benadi and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Gaiarsa, M.P., Kremen, C. & Ponisio, L.C. Pollinator interaction flexibility across scales affects patch colonization and occupancy. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 787–793 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01434-y

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