Influence of taxonomic resolution on mutualistic network properties

Abstract

Abstract Ecologists are increasingly interested in plant–pollinator networks that synthesize in a single object the species and the interactions linking them within their ecological context. Numerous indices have been developed to describe the structural properties and resilience of these networks, but currently, these indices are calculated for a network resolved to the species level, thus preventing the full exploitation of numerous datasets with a lower taxonomic resolution. Here, we used datasets from the literature to study whether taxonomic resolution has an impact on the properties of plant–pollinator networks. For a set of 41 plant–pollinator networks from the literature, we calculated nine network index values at three different taxonomic resolutions: species, genus, and family. We used nine common indices assessing the structural properties or resilience of networks: nestedness (estimated using the nestedness index based on overlap and decreasing fill [NODF], weighted NODF, discrepancy [BR], and spectral radius [SR]), connectance, modularity, robustness to species loss, motifs frequencies, and normalized degree. We observed that modifying the taxonomic resolution of these networks significantly changes the absolute values of the indices that describe their properties, except for the spectral radius and robustness. After the standardization of indices measuring nestedness with the Z‐score, three indices—NODF, BR, and SR for binary matrices—are not significantly different at different taxonomic resolutions. Finally, the relative values of all indices are strongly conserved at different taxonomic resolutions. We conclude that it is possible to meaningfully estimate the properties of plant–pollinator interaction networks with a taxonomic resolution lower than the species level. We would advise using either the SR or robustness on untransformed data, or the NODF, discrepancy, or SR (for weighted networks only) on Z‐scores. Additionally, connectance and modularity can be compared between low taxonomic resolution networks using the rank instead of the absolute values.

Keywords

• connectance
• modularity
• nestedness
• networks
• plant–pollinator
• robustness