Zooming into plant-flower visitor networks: an individual trait-based approach.

ABSTRACT: Understanding how ecological communities are structured is a major goal in ecology. Ecological networks representing interaction patterns among species have become a powerful tool to capture the mechanisms underlying plant-animal assemblages. However, these networks largely do not account for inter-individual variability and thus may be limiting our development of a clear mechanistic understanding of community structure. In this study, we develop a new individual-trait based approach to examine the importance of individual plant and pollinator functional size traits (pollinator thorax width and plant nectar holder depth) in mutualistic networks. We performed hierarchical cluster analyses to group interacting individuals into classes, according to their similarity in functional size. We the

SUBMITTER: Rumeu B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6147118 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature