Biology subjects

Valdovinos, F. S.

Publications and source records attributed to Valdovinos, F. S..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

Niche theory for mutualism: A graphical approach to plant-pollinator network dynamics

Contemporary Niche Theory is a useful framework for understanding how organisms interact with each other and with their shared environment. Its graphical representation, popularized by Tilman’s Resource Ratio Hypothesis, facilitates the analysis of the equilibrium structure of complex dynamical models including species coexistence. This theory has been applied primarily to resource competition since its early beginnings. Here, we integrate mutualism into niche theory by expanding Tilman’s graphical representation to the analysis of consumer-resource dynamics of plant-pollinator networks. We graphically explain the qualitative phenomena previously found by numerical simulations, including the effects on community dynamics of nestedness, adaptive foraging, and pollinator invasions. Our graphical approach promotes the unification of niche and network theories, and deepens the synthesis of different types of interactions within a consumer-resource framework.Secondary Abstract Teoría de Nicho para Mutualismos: Una aproximación gráfica a la dinámica de redes planta-polinizadorLa Teoría Contemporánea de Nicho es un marco útil para entender cómo los organismos interactúan entre ellos y con su ambiente compartido. Su representatión gráfica, popularizada por la Hipótesis de Razón de Recursos de Tilman, facilita el análisis de la estructura de equilibrio de modelos dinámicos complejos, incluyendo la coexistencia de especies. Esta teoría ha sido aplicada primariamente a competencia por recursos desde sus inicios. Aquí, integramos el mutualismo dentro de la teoría de nicho al expandir la representatión gráfica de Tilman al análisis de la dinámica consumidor-recurso de las redes planta-polinizador. Explicamos gráficamente fenómenos cualitativos encontrados previamente mediante simulaciones numéricas, incluyendo los efectos sobre la dinámica comunitaria del anidamiento, forrajeo adaptativo y de las invasiones por polinizadores. Nuestra aproximación gráfica promueve la unificatión de las teorías de nicho y de redes, y profundiza la síntesis de diferentes tipos de interacciones dentro de un marco de consumidor-recurso.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.View Full Text

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Integrating Economic dynamics into Ecological Networks: The case of fishery sustainability

Summary/AbstractUnderstanding and sustainably managing anthropogenic impact on ecosystems requires studying the integrated economic -ecological dynamics driving coupled human-natural systems. Here, we expand ecological network theory to study fishery sustainability by incorporating economic drivers into food-web models to evaluate the dynamics of thousands of single-species fisheries across hundreds of generated food-webs and two management strategies. Analysis reveals harvesting high population biomass species can initially support fishery persistence, but threatens long term economic and ecological sustainability by indirectly inducing extinction cascades in non-harvested species. This dynamic is exacerbated in open access fisheries where profit driven growth in fishing effort increases perturbation strength. Results demonstrate the unique insight into both ecological dynamics and sustainability garnered from considering economically dynamic fishing effort in the network. One Sentence SummaryIntegrating economic drivers into ecological networks reveal non-linear drivers of sustainability in fisheries.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Pollinators in food webs: Mutualistic interactions increase diversity, stability, and function in multiplex networks

Ecosystems are composed of complex networks of many species interacting in different ways. While ecologists have long studied food webs of feeding interactions, recent studies increasingly focus on mutualistic networks including plants that exchange food for reproductive services provided by animals such as pollinators. Here, we synthesize both types of consumer-resource interactions to better understand the controversial effects of mutualism on ecosystems at the species, guild, and whole-community levels. We find that consumer-resource mechanisms underlying plant-pollinator mutualisms can increase the persistence, productivity, abundance, and temporal stability of both mutualists and non-mutualists in food webs. These effects strongly increase with floral reward productivity and are qualitatively robust to variation in the prevalence of mutualism and pollinators feeding upon resources in addition to rewards. This work advances the ability of mechanistic network theory to synthesize different types of interactions and illustrates how mutualism can enhance the diversity, stability, and function of complex ecosystems.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2019

Reconstruction of plant-pollinator networks from observational data

Empirical measurements of ecological networks such as food webs and mutualistic networks are often rich in structure but also noisy and error-prone, particularly for rare species for which observations are sparse. Focusing on the case of plant-pollinator networks, we here describe a Bayesian statistical technique that allows us to make accurate estimates of network structure and ecological metrics from such noisy observational data. Our method yields not only estimates of these quantities, but also estimates of their statistical errors, paving the way for principled statistical analyses of ecological variables and outcomes. We demonstrate the use of the method with an application to previously published data on plant-pollinator networks in the Seychelles archipelago, calculating estimates of network structure, network nestedness, and other characteristics.

ecology↗