Experimental evidence of the importance of multitrophic structure for species persistence
Name
e2023872118.full.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
862.46 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
c12491d6a2539b8084a2f2c5b3ba480a
Author(s)
Bartomeus, Ignasi
Saavedra, Serguei
Rohr, Rudolf P
Godoy, Oscar
Date Issued
March 2021
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Publisher
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Citation
Ignasi Bartomeus, Serguei Saavedra, Rudolf P. Rohr, Oscar Godoy, Experimental evidence of the importance of multitrophic structure for species persistence, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2021, 118 (12)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Ecological theory predicts that species interactions embedded in multitrophic networks shape the opportunities for species to persist. However, the lack of experimental support of this prediction has limited our understanding of how species interactions occurring within and across trophic levels simultaneously regulate the maintenance of biodiversity. Here, we integrate a mathematical approach and detailed experiments in plant–pollinator communities to demonstrate the need to jointly account for species interactions within and across trophic levels when estimating the ability of species to persist. Within the plant trophic level, we show that the persistence probability of plant species increases when introducing the effects of plant–pollinator interactions. Across trophic levels, we show that the persistence probabilities of both plants and pollinators exhibit idiosyncratic changes when experimentally manipulating the multitrophic structure. Importantly, these idiosyncratic effects are not recovered by traditional simulations. Our work provides tractable experimental and theoretical platforms upon which it is possible to investigate the multitrophic factors affecting species persistence in ecological communities.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1073/PNAS.2023872118
