Geographical variation in the heterogeneity of mutualistic networks
Plant–animal mutualistic networks are characterized by highly heterogeneous degree distributions. The majority of species interact with few partner species, while a small number are highly connected to form network hubs that are proposed to play an important role in community stability. It has not b...
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| Format: | Online |
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The Royal Society
2016
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4929896/ |
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pubmed-4929896 |
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pubmed-49298962016-07-15 Geographical variation in the heterogeneity of mutualistic networks Sakai, Shoko Metelmann, Soeren Toquenaga, Yukihiko Telschow, Arndt Biology (Whole Organism) Plant–animal mutualistic networks are characterized by highly heterogeneous degree distributions. The majority of species interact with few partner species, while a small number are highly connected to form network hubs that are proposed to play an important role in community stability. It has not been investigated, however, if or how the degree distributions vary among types of mutualisms or communities, or between plants and animals in the same network. Here, we evaluate the degree distributions of pollination and seed-dispersal networks, which are two major types of mutualistic networks that have often been discussed in parallel, using an index based on Pielou's evenness. Among 56 pollination networks we found strong negative correlation of the heterogeneity between plants and animals, and geographical shifts of network hubs from plants in temperate regions to animals in the tropics. For 28 seed-dispersal networks, by contrast, the correlation was positive, and there is no comparable geographical pattern. These results may be explained by evolution towards specialization in the presence of context-dependent costs that occur if plants share the animal species as interaction partner. How the identity of network hubs affects the stability and resilience of the community is an important question for future studies. The Royal Society 2016-06-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4929896/ /pubmed/27429761 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.150630 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ © 2016 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Sakai, Shoko Metelmann, Soeren Toquenaga, Yukihiko Telschow, Arndt |
| spellingShingle |
Sakai, Shoko Metelmann, Soeren Toquenaga, Yukihiko Telschow, Arndt Geographical variation in the heterogeneity of mutualistic networks |
| author_facet |
Sakai, Shoko Metelmann, Soeren Toquenaga, Yukihiko Telschow, Arndt |
| author_sort |
Sakai, Shoko |
| title |
Geographical variation in the heterogeneity of mutualistic networks |
| title_short |
Geographical variation in the heterogeneity of mutualistic networks |
| title_full |
Geographical variation in the heterogeneity of mutualistic networks |
| title_fullStr |
Geographical variation in the heterogeneity of mutualistic networks |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Geographical variation in the heterogeneity of mutualistic networks |
| title_sort |
geographical variation in the heterogeneity of mutualistic networks |
| description |
Plant–animal mutualistic networks are characterized by highly heterogeneous degree distributions. The majority of species interact with few partner species, while a small number are highly connected to form network hubs that are proposed to play an important role in community stability. It has not been investigated, however, if or how the degree distributions vary among types of mutualisms or communities, or between plants and animals in the same network. Here, we evaluate the degree distributions of pollination and seed-dispersal networks, which are two major types of mutualistic networks that have often been discussed in parallel, using an index based on Pielou's evenness. Among 56 pollination networks we found strong negative correlation of the heterogeneity between plants and animals, and geographical shifts of network hubs from plants in temperate regions to animals in the tropics. For 28 seed-dispersal networks, by contrast, the correlation was positive, and there is no comparable geographical pattern. These results may be explained by evolution towards specialization in the presence of context-dependent costs that occur if plants share the animal species as interaction partner. How the identity of network hubs affects the stability and resilience of the community is an important question for future studies. |
| publisher |
The Royal Society |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4929896/ |
| _version_ |
1613603020360122368 |