Abstract

Ecological communities are composed of many species and an intricate network of interactions between them. Because of their overall complexity, an intriguing approach to understanding network structure is by breaking it down into the structural roles of its constituent species. The structural role of a species can be directly measured based on how it appears in network motifs - the basic building blocks of complex networks. Here, we study the distribution of species' roles at three distinct spatio-temporal scales (i.e. species, network, and temporal) in host-parasitoid networks collected across 22 sites over two years within a fragmented landscape of oaks in southern Finland. We found that species' roles for hosts and parasitoids were heterogeneously distributed across the study system but that roles are strongly conserved over spatial scales. In addition, we found that species' roles were remarkably consistent between years even in the presence of disturbances (e.g. species turnover). Overall, our results suggest that species' roles are an intrinsic property of species that may be predictable over spatial and temporal scales.

Published in

Ecography
2015, Volume: 38, number: 2, pages: 130-139

SLU Authors

• Kaartinen, Riikka

  • Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG15 Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss
SDG13 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts


UKÄ Subject classification

Ecology


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.00913

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/63729