Abstract
In semi-arid environments, the marked contrast in temperature and precipitation over the year strongly shapes ecological communities. The composition of species and their ecological interactions within a community may vary greatly over time. Although intra-annual variations are often studied, empirical information on how plant–bird relationships are structured within and among years, and how their drivers may change over time are still limited. In this study, we analyzed the temporal dynamics of the structure of plant–hummingbird interaction networks by evaluating changes in species richness, diversity of interactions, modularity, network specialization, nestedness, and β-diversity of interactions throughout four years in a Mexican xeric shrubland landscape. We also evaluated if the relative importance of abundance, phenology, morphology, and nectar sugar content consistently explains the frequency of pairwise interactions between plants and hummingbirds across different years. We found that species richness, diversity of interactions, nestedness, and network specialization did vary within and among years. We also observed that the β-diversity of interactions was high among years and was mostly associated with species turnover (i.e., changes in species composition), with a minor contribution of interaction rewiring (i.e., shifting partner species at different times). Finally, the temporal co-occurrence of hummingbird and plant species among months was the best predictor of the frequency of pairwise interactions, and this pattern was consistent within and among years. Our study underscores the importance of considering the temporal scale to understand how changes in species phenologies, and the resulting temporal co-occurrences influence the structure of interaction networks.
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Data availability statement
All response and predictor variables presented in the Supporting Information. Plant–hummingbird interactions are available at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.10050035.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Román Díaz-Valenzuela, Vanesa Martínez-García, Ubaldo Márquez-Luna, and Erika Guzmán-Arias for their valuable assistance during the fieldwork and Juan Francisco Ornelas, Carlos Lara, and Jose G. García-Franco for their valuable comments and suggestions to the early versions of this paper. Financial support was provided by CONACYT (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología) through the project 258364 and an MSc scholarship to ECG (609146). We also thank Museo de Zoología de la Facultad de Ciencias, UNAM and Herbarium XAL, Instituto de Ecología A.C. for facilitating the use of hummingbirds and plants specimens, respectively. DPV was supported by an FONCYT grant (PICT-2014-3168).
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ECG, WD, and ROP conceived the study, ECG and ROP collected the data, ECG and WD analysed the data, JVB, DV, and IMF advertised on the analyses. ECG, JVB, WD, and ROP led the writing of the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.
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Chávez-González, E., Vizentin-Bugoni, J., Vázquez, D.P. et al. Drivers of the structure of plant–hummingbird interaction networks at multiple temporal scales. Oecologia 193, 913–924 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04727-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04727-4