Impacts of sampling effort on seasonal plant-pollinator interaction turnover over eight years

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

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Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/bg257g697

Abstract

Plant-pollinator networks are dynamic in time and space and comprise mutually beneficial interactions between a plant and its pollinating animal. Patterns of temporal and spatial network change can be assessed by investigating interaction turnover, consisting of interaction rewiring and species turnover. To capture network dynamics, it is crucial to address the effect of sampling effort, because insufficient sampling effort can artificially distort the apparent network dynamics. I used eight years of previously collected plant-pollinator interaction data from a Rocky Mountains subalpine meadow to gain insights into patterns of temporal interaction turnover and the role of sampling effort. As sampling effort increased, the calculated values of interaction turnover and species turnover decreased, and rewiring increased, indicating that these metrics approach their true values as sampling effort increases. Across the eight years, considerable variation in weekly and seasonal interaction turnover was observed, but some trends of seasonal patterns across all aggregated years were identified. These results demonstrated that the interpretation of interaction turnover and its components are sensitive to sampling effort. These insights further stress the importance of considering the role of sampling effort in network studies examining interaction turnover, and how our inferences of apparent network metrics change depending on sampling effort.

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