Strong Impact of Temporal Resolution on the Structure of an Ecological Network

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0081694
• Publication Date: 2013-12-05T00:58:42Z
• Authors: Claus Rasmussen; Yoko L. Dupont; Jesper B. Mosbacher; Kristian Trøjelsg...; Jens M. Olesen
• Keywords: Nestedness; Ecological network; Robustness; Visitor pattern

Most ecological networks are analysed as static structures, where all observed species and links present simultaneously. However, this is over-simplified, because temporally dynamical. We resolved an arctic, entire-season plant-flower visitor network into a temporal series of 1-day compared the properties with its equivalent based on data pooled over entire season. Several differed. The nested link pattern in was blurred dynamical version, characteristic long nestedness tail flower–visitor specialists got stunted networks. This comprised small food web pollinators, parasitoids hyper-parasitoids. had strong time delays transmission direct indirect effects among species. Twenty percent were impossible network. Consequently, thus also robustness cannot be deduced from topology alone.