Print PageMutualistic systems composed by flowering plants and their pollinators are fundamental for the maintenance of biodiversity in terrestrial ecosystems. Nevertheless, our understanding of the factors affecting their dynamic responses to environmental disruption is still poor. In this study we analyze the effect of adaptive foraging (AF) of pollinators on the robustness of pollination networks against primary species extinctions. For our purposes, we present a new population dynamics model for pollination networks and we applied it to the topology of three empirical networks.
Results/Conclusions
We found that AF increases the robustness of the networks, enhancing species persistence through increasing the floral resources consumed by pollinators as well as the pollination rate of plants. We propose that AF drives niche partitioning among animals, increasing the availability of food resources for specialist pollinators and the per visit pollination probability of plants.
