Plant–Floral Visitor Network Structure in a Smallholder Cucurbitaceae Agricultural System in the Tropics: Implications for the Extinction of Main Floral Visitors
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
10-1-2017
Description
Animal pollination is responsible for the majority of the human food supply. Understanding pollination dynamics in agricultural systems is thus essential to help maintain this ecosystem service in the face of human disturbances. Surprisingly, our understanding of plant–pollinator interactions in widely distributed smallholder agricultural systems is still limited. Knowledge of pollination dynamics in these agricultural systems is necessary to fully assess how human disturbances may affect pollination services worldwide. In this study, we describe the structure of a plant–floral visitor network in a smallholder Cucurbitaceae agricultural system. We further identify the main floral visitors of these crops and tested their importance by simulating how their extinction affected network structure and robustness. The observed network was highly connected and generalized but it was neither nested nor compartmentalized. Our results suggest that the structure of agricultural plant–pollinator networks could be inherently different from those in natural communities. These differences in network structure may reflect differences in spatial distribution of floral resources between agricultural and natural systems. We identified Augochlora nigrocyanea and Peponapis limitaris as the two most frequent floral visitors. However, removal of these species did not affect network structure or its robustness, suggesting high levels of interaction rewiring. To our knowledge, this is one of the first studies to describe the structure of a plant–floral visitor network in diverse agricultural systems in the tropics. We emphasize the need for more studies that evaluate network structure in agricultural systems if we want to fully elucidate the impact of human disturbances on this key ecosystem service.
Citation Information
Parra-Tabla, Víctor; Campos-Navarrete, María José; and Arceo-Gómez, Gerardo. 2017. Plant–Floral Visitor Network Structure in a Smallholder Cucurbitaceae Agricultural System in the Tropics: Implications for the Extinction of Main Floral Visitors. Arthropod-Plant Interactions. Vol.11(5). 731-740. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11829-017-9529-1 ISSN: 1872-8855