title: Unravelling Darwin's entangled bank: architecture and robustness of mutualistic networks with multiple interaction types.
abstract: Trying to unravel Darwin's entangled bank further, we describe the architecture of a network involving multiple forms of mutualism (pollination by animals, seed dispersal by birds and plant protection by ants) and evaluate whether this multi-network shows evidence of a structure that promotes robustness. We found that species differed strongly in their contributions to the organization of the multi-interaction network, and that only a few species contributed to the structuring of these patterns. Moreover, we observed that the multi-interaction networks did not enhance community robustness compared with each of the three independent mutualistic networks when analysed across a range of simulated scenarios of species extinction. By simulating the removal of highly interacting species, we observed that, overall, these species enhance network nestedness and robustness, but decrease modularity. We discuss how the organization of interlinked mutualistic networks may be essential for the maintenance of ecological communities, and therefore the long-term ecological and evolutionary dynamics of interactive, species-rich communities. We suggest that conserving these keystone mutualists and their interactions is crucial to the persistence of species-rich mutualistic assemblages, mainly because they support other species and shape the network organization.
authors.affiliation: Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Carretera Antigua a Coatepec 351, El Haya, 91070 Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico wdattilo@hotmail.com.
authors.forename: Wesley
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4758-4379
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Dáttilo
authors.affiliation: Centro Iberoamericano de la Biodiversidad (CIBIO), Universidad de Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain.
authors.forename: Nubia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Lara-Rodríguez
authors.affiliation: Integrative Ecology Group, Estación Biológica de Doñana, 41092 Sevilla, Spain.
authors.forename: Pedro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jordano
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, 05508-900 São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Paulo R
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Guimarães
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA.
authors.forename: John N
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Thompson
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology and the Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center, University of Missouri-St Louis, St Louis, MO 63121-4499, USA.
authors.forename: Robert J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Marquis
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Ecologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade de São Paulo, 05508-900 São Paulo, Brazil.
authors.forename: Lucas P
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Medeiros
authors.affiliation: Centro de Investigaciones Biológicas, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo, Pachuca, Hidalgo 42001, Mexico.
authors.forename: Raul
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ortiz-Pulido
authors.affiliation: Centro Iberoamericano de la Biodiversidad (CIBIO), Universidad de Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain.
authors.forename: Maria A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Marcos-García
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Neuroetología, Universidad Veracruzana, 91190 Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.
authors.forename: Victor
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Rico-Gray
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D017753:Ecosystem; D053476:Extinction, Biological; D008954:Models, Biological; D013559:Symbiosis
keywords: coupled networks; keystone mutualists; modularity; nestedness; structure–stability relationships