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Specialization of Mutualistic Interaction Networks Decreases toward Tropical Latitudes

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Author

  • Matthias Schleuning
  • Jochen Fruend
  • Alexandra-Maria Klein
  • Stefan Abrahamczyk
  • Ruben Alarcon
  • Matthias Albrecht
  • Georg Andersson
  • Simone Bazarian
  • Katrin Boehning-Gaese
  • Riccardo Bommarco
  • Bo Dalsgaard
  • D. Matthias Dehling
  • Ariella Gotlieb
  • Melanie Hagen
  • Thomas Hickler
  • Andrea Holzschuh
  • Christopher N. Kaiser-Bunbury
  • Holger Kreft
  • Rebecca J. Morris
  • Brody Sandel
  • William J. Sutherland
  • Jens-Christian Svenning
  • Teja Tscharntke
  • Stella Watts
  • Christiane N. Weiner
  • Michael Werner
  • Neal M. Williams
  • Camilla Winqvist
  • Carsten F. Dormann
  • Nico Bluethgen
Show all

Summary, in English

Species-rich tropical communities are expected to be more specialized than their temperate counterparts [1-3]. Several studies have reported increasing biotic specialization toward the tropics [4-7], whereas others have not found latitudinal trends once accounting for sampling bias [8, 9] or differences in plant diversity [10, 11]. Thus, the direction of the latitudinal Specialization gradient remains contentious. With an unprecedented global data set, we investigated how biotic specialization between plants and animal pollinators or seed dispersers is associated with latitude, past and contemporary climate, and plant diversity. We show that in contrast to expectation, biotic specialization of mutualistic networks is significantly lower at tropical than at temperate latitudes. Specialization was more closely related to contemporary climate than to past climate stability, suggesting that current conditions have a stronger effect on biotic specialization than historical community stability. Biotic specialization decreased with increasing local and regional plant diversity. This suggests that high specialization of mutualistic interactions is a response of pollinators and seed dispersers to low plant diversity. This could explain why the latitudinal specialization gradient is reversed relative to the latitudinal diversity gradient. Low mutualistic network specialization in the tropics suggests higher tolerance against extinctions in tropical than in temperate communities.

Department/s

Publishing year

2012

Language

English

Pages

1925-1931

Publication/Series

Current Biology

Volume

22

Issue

20

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Ecology

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1879-0445