2020 ESA Annual Meeting (August 3 - 6)

INS 9 - Dynamics of Plant-Animal Mutualistic Networks in Space and Time

Thursday, August 6, 2020: 12:30 PM-1:00 PM
Organizer:
Julian Resasco
Co-organizers:
Ana Martín González and Diego Vazquez
Moderator:
Diego Vazquez
While mutualistic interactions among species are dynamic in space and time, their representation in networks is usually static. By explicitly considering the spatial and temporal dimensions we can obtain a deeper understanding of the ecological and evolutionary processes that structure these systems. Such knowledge is fundamental to understand how these networks are impacted by human activities and how they will respond to climate change. Increasingly, ecologists have explored spatiotemporal dynamics of mutualistic networks. This session will showcase current research in this area from ecologists working across various spatial and temporal scales, in various ecosystems, and with different types of mutualistic interactions. Illustrating the range of these scales, one talk will describe how temporal change over minutes affects the opening of flowers and thus the structure plant-pollinator networks as the day unfolds. Another talk will examine how plant-pollinator networks change over a century. Likewise, the scale of spatial extents from the talks will range from a meadow to the entire Earth. This collection of talks will seed a productive discussion toward synthesizing the study of mutualistic networks across scales, an important frontier in ecology.
How flexible are species' roles within plant-pollinator networks? A within-season temporal perspective
Paul J. CaraDonna, Chicago Botanic Garden, Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory
Accounting for observational uncertainty in plant-pollinator networks
Christopher P. Weiss-Lehman, University of Wyoming; Julian Resasco, University of Colorado
Accelerating homogenization of mutualistic interactions in the global plant-frugivore meta-network
Evan Fricke, National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center; Jens-Christian Svenning, Aarhus University
Mutualist networks and biodiversity-ecosystem functioning research
Rachael Winfree, Rutgers University; James R. Reilly, Rutgers University; Dylan T. Simpson, Rutgers University
See more of: Inspire