Tradeoffs in sampling completeness in multitrophic networks in agroecosystems

GREGOIRE, JUAN PABLO; TAVELLA, JULIA; DEVOTO, MARIANO

Palma

Simposio; V SYMPOSIUM ON ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS 2021; 2021

Multitrophic ecological networks provide a tool to simultaneously assess natural pest control andpollination in agroecosystems. However, the detection of interactions in the field may be limited bythe complexity of the community, the type of interaction considered, and the sampling effort invested. This study aims to: assess the incidence of intrinsic (type of interaction) and local (species richness) factors on the sampling completeness of multitrophic networks in agroecosystems; (2) develop criteria to distribute sampling effort to simultaneously study different types of interactions. We sampled plant-pollinator, plant-herbivore and herbivore-parasitoid interactions in twenty field margins in the Pampean region of Argentina. We identified factors that influence two Chao-based completeness indicators. While a network-level indicator was affected by species richness and interaction type, a species-level indicator (which gave more weight to generalist species) was only affected by species richness. Most notably, distributing sampling effort evenly among interaction types resulted in large differences in sampling completeness between the three types of networks. Our study highlights the importance of balancing sampling effort among multiple interaction types to achieve comparable levels of sampling completeness when building multitrophic networks.