Plant-pollinator network persistence and habitat loss: insights from trait-based metacommunity models

ASTEGIANO J

Bristol

Simposio; 2nd EcoNets Symposium. Ecological Networks: Theory, Empiricism and Practice in a Changing World; 2015

University of Bristol

Habitat loss is one of the main causes of the global decline of biodiversity. Understanding how increasing habitat loss affects ecological processes is critical for predicting the vulnerability of biodiversity and thus of ecosystem services to global change. Habitat fragmentation decreases pollinator diversity and the reproduction of wild plants. However, the persistence of plant species in fragmented landscapes may depend on the association among biological traits determining plant sensitivity to pollinator loss, such as breeding system (i.e. plant reproductive dependence on pollinators), pollination generalization and dispersal ability. We investigated how plant-pollinator metacommunities might respond to habitat loss by integrating evolutionary relationships among plant traits, the structure of plant-pollinator interaction networks and metacommunity models. Our trait-based metacommunity model predicts that (1) variation on dispersal ability among plant species may prevent full species extinction under pollinator decline; (2) habitat loss may select for plants with higher dispersal ability and higher autogamous selfing, and may mostly decrease the incidence of pollination-generalist plants; (3) metacommunities originally comprising plants with higher spontaneous selfing may harbour higher plant richness under increased habitat loss and decreased pollinator diversity. We discuss implications of these results for the vulnerability of pollination services for wild plants and crop species co-occurring in human-dominated landscapes.