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Published January 24, 2024 | Version v1
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Urbanisation and agricultural intensification modulate plant–pollinator network structure and robustness

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Institut National de Recherche pour l'Agriculture l'Alimentation et l'Environnement Centre Bourgogne-Franche-Comté

Description

  1. Land use change is a major pressure on pollinator abundance, diversity and plant–pollinator interactions. Far less is known about how land-use alters the structure of plant–pollinator networks and their robustness to plant–pollinator coextinctions.
  2. We analysed the structure of plant–pollinator networks sampled in 12 landscapes along an urbanisation and agricultural intensity gradient, from early spring to late summer 2021, and used a stochastic coextinction model to correlate plant–pollinator coextinction risk with network structure (species and network-level metrics) and landscape context.
  3. Networks in intensively managed (i.e., agricultural and urban) landscapes had a lower risk of initiating a coextinction cascade, while networks in less intensively managed landscapes may be less robust. Network structure modulated the frequency and severity of coextinctions and species loss, while the strength of species interactions increased robustness.
  4. Urban networks were more species rich and symmetrical due to the high diversity of ornamental plants, while intensively managed agricultural landscapes had smaller, more tightly connected and nested networks.
  5. Network structure modulated the frequency of extinctions, which was decreased by greater linkage density, interaction asymmetry and interaction dependence in the networks, while once an extinction occurred, nestedness and linkage density propagated the degree of the coextinction cascade and species loss. At the species level, species strength was inversely correlated with extinction risk, implying that generalist species with a high number of interactions with specialists had the lowest extinction risk.
  6. An interplay between land-use and network structure affects community robustness to coextinctions with implications for pollination services and plant reproduction. Land-use change or other global change pressures by reorganising species interactions can alter communities and their potential functioning.

Files

Functional Ecology - 2024 - Proesmans - Urbanisation and agricultural intensification modulate plant pollinator network.pdf

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Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.5061/dryad.msbcc2g51

Related works

Is supplemented by
Dataset: https://zenodo.org/records/10453214 (Other)

Funding

Agence Nationale de la Recherche
VOODOO - Viral ecO-evOlutionary Dynamics of wild and domestic pOllinatOrs under global change ANR-19-EBI3-0006
Swiss National Science Foundation
Viral eco-evolutionary dynamics of wild and domestic pollinators under global change (VOODOO) 186532
National Science Centre
VOODOO (Viral eco-evolutionary dynamics of wild and domestic pollinators under global change NCN UMO-2019/32/Z/NZ8/00006
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
VOODOO (Viral eco-evolutionary dynamics of wild and domestic pollinators under global change DFGPA632/10-1,12/1
Federal Ministry of Education and Research
VOODOO (Viral eco-evolutionary dynamics of wild and domestic pollinators under global change BMBF16LC1905A
European Commission
Safeguarding European wild pollinators GA 101003476