Positive relationship between crop centrality and pollination service

ALLASINO, MARIANA L.; HAEDO, JOANA P.; LÁZARO, AMPARO; TORRETTA, JUAN P.; MARRERO, HUGO J.

AGRICULTURE, ECOSYSTEMS AND ENVIRONMENT

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Año: 2023 vol. 343

0167-8809

Thetopological structure of interaction networks determines community dynamics andstability. Closeness centrality is a species-level attribute that measures therelative position and proximity of species in the inter[1]actionnetwork. We assessed the link between closeness centrality of crops inplant-pollinator interaction networks and crop seed production. We worked withfive crop species used for seed production distributed in 14 farms. At eachfarm we recorded pollinators’ interactions with the crop and with theco-flowering plants at crop edges and built quantitative plant-pollinatorinteraction networks. For each network, we calculated weighted closenesscentrality of crops and related it to crop seed set by using generalized linearmixed models. Our results show that crop centrality is positively associatedwith crop seed production, and suggest that the use of ecological interactionnetwork metrics in agricultural systems could be useful to design agronomicmanagement plans and enhance crop yields.