Robustness of plant-plant networks with different levels of habitat modification and interaction intimacy

Abstract

Anthropogenic modification of natural environments is the main causes of species extinction in the globe, which directly leads to loss of interspecific links and modifies the structure of ecological networks. The objective of present study is to evaluate the effect of human-induced habitat modification on the connectivity and robustness of ecological interaction networks composed by plant-epiphyte and plant-parasite interactions. In total were analyzed eight distinct binary networks of plant-plant interactions in Brazil, being three epiphyte networks and five parasite networks occurring both in conserved and anthropized habitats. The results show that the human-induced habitat modification influences the connectance of plant-plant networks, since networks of anthropized habitats had greater connectance than the networks of conserved habitats. In addition, the results showed higher values of robustness in the plant-parasite networks when compared to plant-epiphyte networks, and these differences were mainly observed in anthropized habitats. This study presented a new approach for studies of plant-plant ecological interactions, because is the first to compare the effect of human-induced habitat modification on the plant-plant network robustness.

Keywords

• Brazil
• coextinctions
• ecological networks
• habitat loss
• Neotropical interactions