Species turnover increases ant–trophobiont interaction dissimilarities along a geographical gradient

Abstract

Abstract Despite the recent advances regarding the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of ant–trophobiont mutualistic interactions, understanding their spatial variation remains a challenge. An approach involving species interaction networks is a helpful tool to overcome it because it allows us to compare how different species interact among them. Here, we assessed how the dissimilarities in the composition of ant–trophobiont relationships (β‐diversity of interactions) of ants and trophobionts change with increasing geographical distance. For this, we assessed ant–trophobiont interactions in 90 trees along a geographical gradient ranging from 1 to 213 km of distance. We found that the β‐diversity of ant–trophobiont interactions increased with the geographical distance between two sites. Moreover, we observed that the turnover of interacting species was the main component of the β‐diversity of interactions, increasing with the distance between the sampled sites. Even so, interaction rewiring generated by the reassembly of the interactions between the same species in different sites was low and did not change with increasing geographical distance. Our findings indicate that the high species turnover between ant–trophobiont interaction networks could be shaped by the low habitat connectivity between vegetation patches and the low mobility and dispersal capacities of mutualistic partners, generating unique interactions over space.