Reviving collapsed plant–pollinator networks from a single species
Gaurav Baruah and
Meike J Wittmann
PLOS Biology, 2024, vol. 22, issue 10, 1-32
Abstract:
Mutualistic ecological networks can suddenly transition to undesirable states due to small changes in environmental conditions. Recovering from such a collapse can be difficult as restoring the original environmental conditions may be infeasible. Additionally, such networks can also exhibit a phenomenon known as hysteresis, whereby the system could exhibit multiple states under the same environmental conditions, implying that ecological networks may not recover. Here, we attempted to revive collapsed mutualistic networks to a high-functioning state from a single species, using concepts from signal propagation theory and an eco-evolutionary model based on network structures of 115 empirical plant–pollinator networks. We found that restoring the environmental conditions rarely aided in recovery of collapsed networks, but a positive relationship between recovering pollinator density and network nestedness emerged, which was qualitatively supported by empirical plant–pollinator restoration data. In contrast, network resurrection from a collapsed state in undesirable environmental conditions where restoration has minimal impacts could be readily achieved by perturbing a single species or a few species that control the response of the dynamical networks. Additionally, nestedness in networks and a moderate amount of trait variation could aid in the revival of networks even in undesirable environmental conditions. Our work suggests that focus should be applied to a few species whose dynamics could be steered to resurrect entire networks from a collapsed state and that network architecture could play a crucial role in reviving collapsed plant–pollinator networks.How can we revive a collapsed mutualistic ecological network? This study uses concepts from signal propagation theory and an eco-evolutionary model based on network structures of 115 empirical plant-pollinator networks to reveal that effort should be focused on one or a few key species.
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002826 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article/file ... 02826&type=printable (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pbio00:3002826
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002826
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in PLOS Biology from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosbiology ().