Department of Entomology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA.
Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Nat Ecol Evol. 2021 Jun;5(6):787-793. doi: 10.1038/s41559-021-01434-y. Epub 2021 Apr 1.
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.
全球变化改变了生态群落，可能会破坏生态相互作用和生态系统功能的提供。随着生态群落对全球变化的响应，物种可能会在局部灭绝或形成新的相互作用。迄今为止，很少有研究评估物种在其相互作用模式中的灵活性，这主要是由于缺乏跨越长时间序列的数据。本研究使用了加利福尼亚中央谷为期十年的物种水平的互利共生网络组装数据集，检验了相互作用的灵活性是否会影响传粉者的定殖和持续生存及其在高度改造景观中的栖息地占有情况。我们提出了与生态群落内不同组织尺度相关的三种相互作用灵活性度量标准，并探讨了哪些物种特征会影响这些度量标准。我们的研究结果提供了经验证据，将物种在景观中定殖生境斑块的能力与它们在网络中所扮演的角色联系起来。物候宽度和体型对相互作用的灵活性有相反的影响。本研究证明了互利共生网络与物种在景观中定殖和持续生存的关系，表明相互作用的灵活性是社区在群落组成发生变化时维持生态系统功能的潜在机制。
