Journal
ECOLOGICAL APPLICATIONS
Volume 20, Issue 6, Pages 1491-1497Publisher
ECOLOGICAL SOC AMER
DOI: 10.1890/09-1626.1
Keywords
area effect; Argentina; dominance; evenness; habitat island; interaction diversity; island biogeography; isolation; link diversity; Pampas; pollination webs; species richness
Categories
Funding
- INTA Balcarce [PNECO1302]
- Argentina National Research Council for Research [PIP 01623]
- National Fund for Research [PICT 01300]
- National University of Comahue [B152/04]
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Island biogeography theory predicts that species richness increases with habitat area and declines with isolation. We expand this framework to address changes in the number of links and species in pollination webs from 12 isolated hills, ranging in area from tens to thousands of hectares, immersed in the agriculture matrix of the Argentine Pampas. We also studied whether total interaction frequency is partitioned more evenly among individual links in richer webs. Our results reveal a direct effect of area on the number of links and species present in each pollination web. However, link richness increased twofold faster than species richness with area. These area effects were not confounded by sampling effort or correlated incidence of exotic species, despite widespread habitat disturbance. Habitat proximity, an inverse measure of isolation, had a marginally significant influence on link but not on species richness. Increased link number was associated with decreasing dominance by any particular interaction and increasing interaction evenness. Despite the strong area effect, a rich pollination web sampled from a small, protected sierra suggests that simple conservation measures, such as reduced grazing and fire suppression, may effectively preserve much local interaction diversity.
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