INVESTIGADORES
VAZQUEZ Diego P.
artículos
Título:
Evaluating sampling completeness in a desert plant-pollinator network
Autor/es:
CHACOFF NP; VÁZQUEZ DP; LOMÁSCOLO SB; STEVANI EL; DORADO J; PADRÓN B
Revista:
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY
Editorial:
WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC
Referencias:
Lugar: Londres; Año: 2012 vol. 81 p. 190 - 200
ISSN:
0021-8790
Resumen:
1. The study of plant?pollinator interactions in a network context is receiving increasing attention.This approach has helped to identify several emerging network patterns such as nestedness andmodularity. However, most studies are based only on qualitative information, and some ecosys-tems, such as deserts and tropical forests, are underrepresented in these data sets.2. We present an exhaustive analysis of the structure of a 4-year plant?pollinator network fromthe Monte desert in Argentina using qualitative and quantitative tools. We describe the structureof this network and evaluate sampling completeness using asymptotic species richness estimators.Our goal is to assess the extent to which the realized sampling effort allows for an accurate descrip-tion of species interactions and to estimate the minimum number of additional censuses requiredto detect 90% of the interactions. We evaluated completeness of detection of the community-widepollinator fauna, of the pollinator fauna associated with each plant species and of the plant?polli-nator interactions. We also evaluated whether sampling completeness was influenced by plantcharacteristics, such as flower abundance, flower life span, number of interspecific links (degree)and selectiveness in the identity of their flower visitors, as well as sampling effort.3. We found that this desert plant?pollinator network has a nested structure and that it exhibitsmodularity and high network-level generalization.4. In spite of our high sampling effort, and although we sampled 80% of the pollinator fauna, werecorded only 55% of the interactions. Furthermore, although a 64% increase in sampling effortwould suffice to detect 90% of the pollinator species, a fivefold increase in sampling effort wouldbe necessary to detect 90% of the interactions.5. Detection of interactions was incomplete for most plant species, particularly specialists with along flowering season and high flower abundance, or generalists with short flowering span andscant flowers. Our results suggest that sampling of a network with the same effort for all plant spe-cies is inadequate to sample interactions.6. Sampling the diversity of interactions is labour intensive, and most plant?pollinator networkspublished to date are likely to be undersampled. Our analysis allowed estimating the completenessof our sampling, the additional effort needed to detect most interactions and the plant traits thatinfluence the detection of their interactions.