Abstract
Linking the functional role of plants and pollinators in pollination networks to ecosystem functioning and resistance to perturbations can represent a valuable knowledge to implement sound conservation and monitoring programs. The aim of this study was to assess the resistance of pollination networks in coastal dune systems and to test whether pollination interactions have an explicit spatial configuration and whether this affect network resistance. To this aim, we placed six permanent 10 m-wide belt transects. Within each transect we placed five plots of 2 m x 2 m, in order to catch the different plant communities along the dune sequence. We monitored pollination interactions between plants and pollinators every 15 days during the overall flowering season. The resulting networks of pollination interactions showed a relatively low degree of resistance. However, they had a clear spatial configuration, with plant species differently contributing to the resistance of pollination networks occurring non-randomly from the seashore inland. Our results evidenced that beside contributing to the creation and maintenance of dune ridges, thereby protecting inland communities from environmental disturbance, plant species of drift line and shifting dune communities have also a crucial function in conferring resistance to coastal dune pollination networks.
Highlights
Biodiversity loss is currently threatening the productivity and sustainability of Earth’s ecosystems[1]
Linking network functional role of plant and pollinator species to ecosystem functioning represents a crucial goal for the conservation of natural and semi-natural communities; only recently studies on pollination networks have extended the focus to the landscape scale[16]
Since we sampled plant communities subjected to different environmental conditions, which might possibly lead to differences in pollinator activity, for each plant community we evaluated the sampling completeness of animal-pollinated plant and pollinator species, and of pollination interactions
Summary
Biodiversity loss is currently threatening the productivity and sustainability of Earth’s ecosystems[1]. Species’ network functional role can notably change across mutualistic partners, with different species contributing differently to the resistance of pollination networks[14]. Highly generalist, partner-sharing species have been suggested to play a key role in the persistence of pollination interactions, by conferring resistance to the overall network of interactions, while, specialized and highly selective species occupy a peripheral position, contributing only marginally to the network stability[15]. Linking network functional role of plant and pollinator species to ecosystem functioning represents a crucial goal for the conservation of natural and semi-natural communities; only recently studies on pollination networks have extended the focus to the landscape scale[16]. Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to E.F. (email: edy.fantinato@ unive.it) www.nature.com/scientificreports/
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