Conservation, restoration and land management are increasingly implemented at landscape scales. However, because species interaction data are typically habitat- and/or guild-specific, exactly how those interactions connect habitats and affect the stability and function of communities at landscape scales remains poorly understood. We combine multi-guild species interaction data (plant-pollinator and three plant-herbivore-parasitoid communities, collected from landscapes with one, two or three habitats), a field experiment and a modelling approach to show that multi-habitat landscapes support higher species and interaction evenness, more complementary species interactions and more consistent robustness to species loss.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRiver invertebrate communities across Europe have been changing in response to variations in water quality over recent decades, but the underlying drivers are difficult to identify because of the complex stressors and environmental heterogeneity involved. Here, using data from ∼4000 locations across England and Wales, collected over 29 years, we use three approaches to help resolve the drivers of spatiotemporal variation in the face of this complexity: i) mapping changes in invertebrate richness and community composition; ii) structural equation modelling (SEM) to distinguish land cover, water quality and climatic influences; and iii) geographically weighted regression (GWR) to identify how the apparent relationships between invertebrate communities and abiotic variables change across the area. Mapping confirmed widespread increases in richness and the proportion of pollution-sensitive taxa across much of England and Wales.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNutrients can shape ecological interactions but remain poorly integrated into ecological networks. Concepts such as nutrient-specific foraging nevertheless have the potential to expose the mechanisms structuring complex ecological systems. Nutrients also present an opportunity to predict dynamic processes, such as interaction rewiring and extinction cascades, and increase the accuracy of network analyses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlant pollen is rich in protein, sterols and lipids, providing crucial nutrition for many pollinators. However, we know very little about the quantity, quality and timing of pollen availability in real landscapes, limiting our ability to improve food supply for pollinators. We quantify the floral longevity and pollen production of a whole plant community for the first time, enabling us to calculate daily pollen availability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvasive flowering plants can disrupt plant-pollinator networks. This is well documented where invasives occur amongst native plants; however, the potential for 'spillover' effects of invasives that form stands in adjacent habitats are less well understood. Here we quantify the impact of two invasive Australian species, and , on the plant-pollinator networks in fynbos habitats in South Africa.
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