Correlated loss of ecosystem services in coupled mutualistic networks
- 8 May 2014
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Springer Science and Business Media LLC in Nature Communications
- Vol. 5 (1), 3810
- https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms4810
Abstract
Networks of species interactions promote biodiversity and provide important ecosystem services. These networks have traditionally been studied in isolation, but species are commonly involved in multiple, diverse types of interaction. Therefore, whether different types of species interaction networks coupled through shared species show idiosyncratic or correlated responses to habitat degradation is unresolved. Here we study the collective response of coupled mutualistic networks of plants and their pollinators and seed dispersers to the degradation of Europe’s last relict of old-growth lowland forest (Białowieża, Poland). We show that logging of old-growth forests has correlated effects on the number of partners and interactions of plants in both mutualisms, and that these effects are mediated by shifts in plant densities on logged sites. These results suggest bottom-up-controlled effects of habitat degradation on plant–animal mutualistic networks, and predict that the conversion of primary old-growth forests to secondary habitats may cause a parallel loss of multiple animal-mediated ecosystem services.This publication has 51 references indexed in Scilit:
- Node-by-node disassembly of a mutualistic interaction web driven by species introductionsProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2013
- Specialization and Rarity Predict Nonrandom Loss of Interactions from Mutualist NetworksScience, 2012
- The Robustness and Restoration of a Network of Ecological NetworksScience, 2012
- The ecological and evolutionary implications of merging different types of networksEcology Letters, 2011
- A consumer–resource approach to the density‐dependent population dynamics of mutualismEcology, 2010
- The Coevolving Web of Life(American Society of Naturalists Presidential Address)The American Naturalist, 2009
- Ecology: The heart of the woodNature, 2008
- Plant-Animal Mutualistic Networks: The Architecture of BiodiversityAnnual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 2007
- Habitat modification alters the structure of tropical host–parasitoid food websNature, 2007
- Managing ecosystem services: what do we need to know about their ecology?Ecology Letters, 2005