Abstract

Indirect interactions are pivotal in the evolution of interacting species and the assembly of populations and communities. Nevertheless, despite recently being investigated in plant–animal mutualism at the community level, indirect interactions have not been studied in resource-mediated mutualisms involving plant individuals that share different animal species as partners within a population (i.e., individual-based networks). Here, we analyzed an individual-based ant–plant network to evaluate how resource properties affect indirect interaction patterns and how changes in indirect links leave imprints in the network across multiple levels of network organization. Using complementary analytical approaches, we described the patterns of indirect interactions at the micro-, meso-, and macro-scale. We predicted that plants offering intermediate levels of nectar quantity and quality interact with more diverse ant assemblages. The increased number of ant species would cause a higher potential for indirect interactions in all scales evaluated. We found that nectar properties modified patterns of indirect interactions of plant individuals that share mutualistic partners, leaving imprints across different network scales. To our knowledge, this is the first study tracking indirect interactions in multiple scales within an individual-based network. We show that functional traits of interacting species, such as nectar properties, may lead to changes in indirect interactions, which could be tracked across different levels of the network organization evaluated.

中文翻译：

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资源介导的蚂蚁-植物网络上跨不同网络组织级别的间接相互作用的印记

摘要

间接相互作用对于相互作用物种的进化以及种群和群落的聚集至关重要。然而，尽管最近在群落层面上对动植物互利共生进行了研究，但尚未在涉及植物个体的资源介导的互利共生中研究间接相互作用，这些植物个体在种群内共享不同的动物物种作为伙伴（即基于个体的网络）。在这里，我们分析了基于个体的蚂蚁-植物网络，以评估资源属性如何影响间接交互模式，以及间接链接的变化如何在网络组织的多个层面上留下印记。使用互补的分析方法，我们描述了微观、中观和宏观尺度上的间接相互作用的模式。我们预测，提供中等水平花蜜数量和质量的植物会与更多样化的蚂蚁群落相互作用。蚂蚁物种数量的增加将导致在所有评估的尺度上产生间接相互作用的可能性更高。我们发现花蜜特性改变了共享互惠伙伴的植物个体的间接相互作用的模式，在不同的网络规模上留下了印记。据我们所知，这是第一项在基于个体的网络中跟踪多个尺度的间接交互的研究。我们表明，相互作用物种的功能特征（例如花蜜特性）可能会导致间接相互作用的变化，这可以在评估的网络组织的不同级别上进行跟踪。