On the structural stability of mutualistic systems

Rohr, Rudolf P.; Saavedra, Serguei; Bascompte, Jordi

doi:10.1126/science.1253497

Cited by 490 publications

(801 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…For instance, Allesina and Tang (2012) reconfirmed that asymptotic stability is negatively affected by nestedness in bipartite mutualistic networks, and as such at ecological time scales, an ecosystem dominated by mutualistic interactions is likely unstable and species poor. In contrast, mutualistic communities can maximise structural stability through potentially enhanced nestedness (Rohr et al 2014); that is, at long-term time scales, mutualistic interactions can act as a stabilizing force and restrict diversification (Raimundo et al 2014). Invasibility also shows strong positive correlations (p \ 0.0001) with all three measurements of network architecture (with quantitative connectance, r = 0.266; with nestedness, r = 0.179; with modularity, r = 0.324).…”

Section: Network Structure and Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 84%

Defining invasiveness and invasibility in ecological networks

et al. 2016

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The success of a biological invasion is context dependent, and yet two key concepts-the invasiveness of species and the invasibility of recipient ecosystems-are often defined and considered separately. We propose a framework that can elucidate the complex relationship between invasibility and invasiveness. It is based on trait-mediated interactions between species and depicts the response of an ecological network to the intrusion of an alien species, drawing on the concept of community saturation. Here, invasiveness of an introduced species with a particular trait is measured by its per capita population growth rate when the initial propagule pressure of the introduced species is very low. The invasibility of the recipient habitat or ecosystem is dependent on the structure of the resident ecological network and is defined as the total width of an opportunity niche in the trait space susceptible to invasion. Invasibility is thus a measure of network instability. We also correlate invasibility with the asymptotic stability of resident ecological network, measured by the leading eigenvalue of the interaction matrix that depicts traitbased interaction intensity multiplied by encounter rate (a pairwise product of propagule pressure of all members in a community). We further examine the relationship between invasibility and network architecture, including network connectance, nestedness and modularity. We exemplify this framework with a trait-based assembly model under perturbations in ways to emulate fluctuating resources and random trait composition in ecological networks. The maximum invasiveness of a potential invader (greatest Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article

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Section: Network Structure and Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 84%

Defining invasiveness and invasibility in ecological networks

et al. 2016

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“…A high connectance may have a strong stabilizing role via functional redundancy, and a nested interaction pattern of interactions might also facilitate the maintenance of species coexistence 27 , provide resistance against perturbations 28 and maximize total abundance 29 . However, there is currently a strong debate about the stabilizing role of nestedness 30 . The lack of modules in the Galápagos bird-flower network is attributed to the large bulk of interactions among generalists 25,31 , which glues all species tightly together.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bird–flower visitation networks in the Galápagos unveil a widespread interaction release

et al. 2015

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Owing to food scarcity and to the high densities that vertebrates often reach on islands, typical insect-and seed-eaters widen their feeding niche and interact with a greater fraction of species than their mainland counterparts. This phenomenon, coined here 'interaction release', has been previously reported for single species but never for an entire community. During 4 years, we gathered data on bird-flower visitation on 12 Galápagos islands. We show that all sampled land birds exploit floral resources and act as potential pollinators across the entire archipelago, in all major habitats and all year round. Although species and link composition varies among islands, strong interaction release takes place on all islands, making their bird-flower network highly generalized. Interaction release is crucial to the survival of native birds but simultaneously threatens the unique biodiversity of this archipelago, as the birds also visit invading plants, likely facilitating their integration into pristine native communities.

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“…By allowing consumers to readjust their exploited resources via updating the interaction matrix, our model successfully captured the essence of the structural emergence and the process of stabilization in antagonistic networks (see the electronic supplementary material, figure S7), suggesting that a network model implementing all relevant evolutionary processes is a better proxy than a rigid network for ecological communities and that the adaptive interaction switch is important for forecasting the response of ecosystems to environmental changes and perturbations [18,57], without ignoring the behavioural innovation from random drift that can further broaden the evolutionary trajectory. To this end, we should also consider structural stability [58] or more generally evolutionary stability of ecological networks. Since Lyapunov and evolutionary stability reflect different aspects of interaction networks, they have different implications for understanding network resilience.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A hybrid behavioural rule of adaptation and drift explains the emergent architecture of antagonistic networks

2015

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Ecological processes that can realistically account for network architectures are central to our understanding of how species assemble and function in ecosystems. Consumer species are constantly selecting and adjusting which resource species are to be exploited in an antagonistic network. Here we incorporate a hybrid behavioural rule of adaptive interaction switching and random drift into a bipartite network model. Predictions are insensitive to the model parameters and the initial network structures, and agree extremely well with the observed levels of modularity, nestedness and node-degree distributions for 61 real networks. Evolutionary and community assemblage histories only indirectly affect network structure by defining the size and complexity of ecological networks, whereas adaptive interaction switching and random drift carve out the details of network architecture at the faster ecological time scale. The hybrid behavioural rule of both adaptation and drift could well be the key processes for structure emergence in real ecological networks.

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On the structural stability of mutualistic systems

Cited by 490 publications

References 50 publications

Defining invasiveness and invasibility in ecological networks

Defining invasiveness and invasibility in ecological networks

Bird–flower visitation networks in the Galápagos unveil a widespread interaction release

A hybrid behavioural rule of adaptation and drift explains the emergent architecture of antagonistic networks

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