Tropical forest fragmentation affects floral visitors but not the structure of individual-based palm-pollinator networks

Abstract

Despite increasing knowledge about the effects of habitat loss on pollinators in natural landscapes, information is very limited regarding the underlying mechanisms of forest fragmentation affecting plant-pollinator interactions in such landscapes. Here, we used a network approach to describe the effects of forest fragmentation on the patterns of interactions involving the understory dominant palm Astrocaryum mexicanum (Arecaceae) and its floral visitors (including both effective and non-effective pollinators) at the individual level in a Mexican tropical rainforest landscape. Specifically, we asked: (i) Does fragment size affect the structure of individual-based plant-pollinator networks? (ii) Does the core of highly interacting visitor species change along the fragmentation size gradient? (iii) Does forest fragment size influence the abundance of effective pollinators of A. mexicanum? We found that fragment size did not affect the topological structure of the individual-based palm-pollinator network. Furthermore, while the composition of peripheral non-effective pollinators changed depending on fragment size, effective core generalist species of pollinators remained stable. We also observed that both abundance and variance of effective pollinators of male and female flowers of A. mexicanum increased with forest fragment size. These findings indicate that the presence of effective pollinators in the core of all forest fragments could keep the network structure stable along the gradient of forest fragmentation. In addition, pollination of A. mexicanum could be more effective in larger fragments, since the greater abundance of pollinators in these fragments may increase the amount of pollen and diversity of pollen donors between flowers of individual plants. Given the prevalence of fragmentation in tropical ecosystems, our results indicate that the current patterns of land use will have consequences on the underlying mechanisms of pollination in remnant forests.