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.
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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Vania Plaza Nunes and the Fundação Serra do Japi (Prefeitura Municipal de Jundiaí) for providing facilities during fieldwork; Priscila Sanz-Veiga, Catarina Belli, Marielly Campos, and Bruno Campos for helping us during fieldwork; Heloíza Cassola and the Institute of Biosciences of Botucatu, São Paulo State University (Unesp), for logistic support for fieldwork. Also, we thank Pietro Maruyama for his commentaries on an early version of the manuscript. This study results from the course “Projetos Integrados em Ecologia” supported by the Institute of Biosciences of São Paulo State University (Unesp, Botucatu campus).
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CSB was supported by an undergraduate research grant from Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP, grant no. 2017/27177–9). CSB and LH-F were supported by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – Brasil (CAPES, graduate grants FinanceCode 001); FWA is supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico CNPq (research grant 308559/2022–3).
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CSB originally formulated the idea. CSB and FWA conceived and developed the methodology. CSB, FWA, and LHF conducted fieldwork. CSB performed the statistical analyses. JVB validated statistical analysis and study design. CSB and JVB wrote the manuscript. LHF and FWA revised/edited the manuscript. FWA supervised the research.
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Ballarin, C.S., Vizentin-Bugoni, J., Hachuy-Filho, L. et al. Imprints of indirect interactions on a resource-mediated ant–plant network across different levels of network organization. Oecologia 204, 661–673 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-024-05522-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-024-05522-1