Spatial turnover of pairwise plant-pollinator interactions

CARSTENSEN D.W.; SABATINO M.; MORELLATO L.P.C.

San José

Encuentro; ATBC 50 TH ANNIVERSARY MEETING; 2013

ATBC-OTS

Interactions between species is an important, but often ignored, part of biodiversity. The diversity and structure of interactions is influenced by the composition, richness, and relative abundance of the species in a given community. The complex networks of these interactions have proven hard to predict however, as the identity of species interactions within communities is highly variable and may change substantially over time. The prominence and ubiquity of this plasticity of interacting species is still poorly known. Here, we seek to quantify the variability of plant pollinator interactions networks across space. The turnover in the structure of interaction networks across space or over time can be divided into two components: species turnover and interaction turnover. Species turnover will naturally cause a turnover in the network. The second component, interaction turnover, is caused by species changing their links. Here we quantify the importance of each of these beta diversity components across seven sites of high diversity rupestrian fields (campos rupestres) in Serra do Cipó, Brazil. We conducted observations of plant-pollinator interactions in these sites during the peak of the flowering season, October ? December, 2012. The sites were abiotically very similar and with a minor turnover of plant species among sites. We asked 1) how well can we predict the interaction matrix of a site from the composition of plant and pollinator species, and 2) which amount of interaction turnover can be expected between sites, that is, can we predict the amount of the total network turnover which is caused by interaction turnover alone. We find that even with a low turnover of species, network turnover can be high. Species and interactions seem to be filtered by different environmental factors.