Network reorganization and breakdown of an ant-plant protection mutualism with elevation.

ABSTRACT: Both the abiotic environment and the composition of animal and plant communities change with elevation. For mutualistic species, these changes are expected to result in altered partner availability, and shifts in context-dependent benefits for partners. To test these predictions, we assessed the network structure of terrestrial ant-plant mutualists and how the benefits to plants of ant inhabitation changed with elevation in tropical forest in Papua New Guinea. At higher elevations, ant-plants were rarer, species richness of both ants and plants decreased, and the average ant or plant species interacted with fewer partners. However, networks became increasingly connected and less specialized, more than could be accounted for by reductions in ant-plant abundance. On the most common ant-plant

SUBMITTER: Plowman NS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5360921 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature