Hinton Chelsea R, Peters Valerie E
Department of Biological Sciences Eastern Kentucky University Richmond KY USA.
Ecol Evol. 2021 Feb 10;11(5):2346-2359. doi: 10.1002/ece3.7203. eCollection 2021 Mar.
Plant-animal interaction science repeatedly finds that plant species differ by orders of magnitude in the number of interactions they support. The identification of plant species that play key structural roles in plant-animal networks is a global conservation priority; however, in hyperdiverse systems such as tropical forests, empirical datasets are scarce. Plant species with longer reproductive seasons are posited to support more interactions compared to plant species with shorter reproductive seasons but this hypothesis has not been evaluated for plant species with the longest reproductive season possible at the individual plant level, the continuous reproductive phenology. Resource predictability is also associated with promoting specialization, and therefore, continuous reproduction may instead favor specialist interactions. Here, we use quantitative pollinating insect-plant networks constructed from countryside habitat of the Tropical Wet forest Life Zone and modularity analysis to test whether plant species that share the trait of continuous flowering hold core roles in mutualistic networks. With a few exceptions, most plant species sampled within our network were assigned to the role of peripheral. All but one network had significantly high modularity scores and each continuous flowering plant species was in a different module. Our work reveals that the continuous flowering plant species differed in some networks in their topological role, and that more evidence was found for the phenology to support specialized subsets of interactions. Our findings suggest that the conservation of Neotropical pollinating insect communities may require planting species from each module rather than identifying and conserving network hubs.
植物与动物相互作用的科学研究反复发现，不同植物物种所支持的相互作用数量相差几个数量级。识别在植物 - 动物网络中发挥关键结构作用的植物物种是全球保护的重点；然而，在热带森林等高度多样化的系统中，实证数据集却很稀缺。与生殖季节较短的植物物种相比，生殖季节较长的植物物种被认为能支持更多的相互作用，但这一假设尚未在个体植物水平上针对具有最长可能生殖季节的植物物种——连续生殖物候进行评估。资源可预测性也与促进专业化相关，因此，连续繁殖可能反而有利于特化的相互作用。在这里，我们使用从热带湿润森林生物区农村栖息地构建的定量传粉昆虫 - 植物网络和模块分析，来测试具有连续开花特征的植物物种在互利网络中是否占据核心地位。除了少数例外，我们网络中采样的大多数植物物种都被归为边缘角色。除了一个网络外，所有网络的模块性得分都显著较高，并且每个连续开花的植物物种都处于不同的模块中。我们的研究表明，连续开花的植物物种在某些网络中的拓扑角色有所不同，并且有更多证据表明物候学支持特化的相互作用子集。我们的研究结果表明，新热带传粉昆虫群落的保护可能需要种植每个模块中的物种，而不是识别和保护网络枢纽。
