Abstract:
Plant-flower visitor interaction is one of the most important relationships regarding the co-existence of the floral and faunal communities. The implication of network approaches is an efficient way to understand the impact of community structure on ecosystem functionality. To understand the association pattern of flower visitors, we performed this study on Avicennia officinalis and Avicennia marina mangroves from the islands of Indian Sundarban over three consecutive years. We found that visiting time and sites (islands) influenced the abundance of visitors. The bipartite networks showed a significant generalized structure for both site-visitor and visiting time-visitor networks where the strength and specialization of visitor species showed a highly and moderately significant positive correlation between both networks respectively. All the site-wise visiting time-visitor networks and year-wise site-visitor networks were significantly modular in structure. For both the plants, most of the visitors showed a generalized association pattern among islands and also among visiting times. Additionally, the study of the foraging behavior of dominant visitors showed Apis dorsata and Apis mellifera as the potential visitors for these plants. Our results showed that flower visitor networks are spatiotemporally dynamic. The interactions of visitors with flowers at different times influence their contribution to the network for becoming a generalist or peripheral species in the context of their visiting time, which may subsequently change over islands. This approach will help to devise more precise plant species-specific conservation strategies by understanding the contribution of visitors through the spatiotemporal context.
摘要:
植物-花卉访客互动是花卉和动物群落共存的最重要关系之一。网络方法的含义是理解社区结构对生态系统功能影响的有效方法。为了了解花卉游客的联想模式,我们连续三年对印度Sundarban群岛的Aviceniaofficinalis和Avicenniamarina红树林进行了这项研究。我们发现,参观时间和地点(岛屿)影响了游客的数量。双向网络对于站点访问者和访问时间访问者网络都显示出明显的广义结构,其中访问者物种的强度和专业化分别在两个网络之间显示出高度和中度显着的正相关。所有站点访问时间访问者网络和年度站点访问者网络在结构上都是模块化的。对于这两种植物来说,大多数游客在岛屿之间以及访问时间之间表现出普遍的联想模式。此外,对主要来访者的觅食行为的研究表明,多毛Apis和Apismellifera是这些植物的潜在来访者。我们的结果表明,花卉访客网络是时空动态的。游客与花卉在不同时间的互动影响他们对网络的贡献,在他们的访问时间的背景下成为通才或外围物种,随后可能会改变岛屿。这种方法将通过时空背景了解访客的贡献,有助于制定更精确的针对植物物种的保护策略。