Print PageMutualistic interactions are ubiquitous in nature and have been suggested to even represent the backbone of ecological communities. Several network properties have been identified that play a pivotal role in determining the stability and complexity and the interplay between them are nestedness and asymmetry. However, the mechanisms that give rise to those network properties are still unclear. Phenology in particular seems important, as it shapes the topology of mutualistic interaction networks. However, the effects of species phenologies on the dynamics, stability and coexistence of mutualistic networks have, to our knowledge, scarcely been studied. Here, we study these effects with a general dynamical model of mutualistic and competitive interactions where the strength of these interactions depends on the species temporal overlap resulting from their phenologies.
Results/Conclusions
We find that the shape of the distribution of phenologies (i.e. the variation of starting and final dates distribution, measured by their variance) simultaneously determines stability, coexistence and network structural properties of mutualistic communities: phenology distributions that maximize mutualistic interactions and minimize intra-guild competitive interactions generate speciose, highly nested and poorly connected networks with weak moderate asymmetric interaction strengths and low resilience. Furthermore, we find that lengthening the season length increases the stability, resilience and diversity of the communities. This study highlights the fragility of real mutualistic communities with short seasons (e.g. Arctic environments) to drastic environmental changes because of their low resilience. Finally, we argue that phenology not only drives mutualistic interaction networks, but also affects stability and diversity of other ecological networks, especially in communities living under high environmental seasonality.
