ORCID Profile
0000-0002-0108-6411
Current Organisation
University of Zurich
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Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date: 22-11-2021
DOI: 10.1101/2021.11.22.469544
Abstract: Species interactions have evolved from antagonistic to mutualistic and back several times throughout life’s history. Yet, it is unclear how changes in the type of interaction between species alter the coevolutionary dynamics of entire communities. This is a pressing matter, as transitions from mutualisms to antagonisms may be becoming more common with human-induced global change. Here, we combine network and evolutionary theory to simulate how shifts in interaction types alter the coevolution of empirical communities. We show that as mutualistic networks shift to antagonistic, selection imposed by direct partners begins to outweigh that imposed by indirect partners. This weakening of indirect effects is associated with communities losing their tight integration of traits and increasing their rate of adaptation. The above changes are more pronounced when specialist consumers are the first species to switch to antagonism. A shift in the outcome of species’ interactions may therefore reverberate across communities and alter the direction and speed of coevolution.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 10-2010
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 06-06-2012
DOI: 10.1038/NATURE11018
Abstract: Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence. The plausibility of a planetary-scale 'tipping point' highlights the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions on global as well as local scales, and by detecting feedbacks that promote such transitions. It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 03-05-2021
DOI: 10.1111/GEB.13310
Abstract: Extinctions and coextinctions seriously threaten global plant–pollinator assemblies, and thus a better understanding of the geographic variability in their robustness is urgently required. Although the geographic patterns of species extinction rates are frequently explored, it remains largely unknown how the subsequent coextinction risk of species varies across environments. We hypothesize that the geographic variation of network robustness to extinctions is mediated by modularity – the tendency of a network to be organized in modules of strongly interacting species – because modularity buffers perturbations and varies across environments. Global. Current. Flowering plants and their animal pollinators. Using 79 pollination networks, we first explored the variation of network robustness across geographic and climatic gradients and, second, analysed the role of modularity in explaining the association between robustness and those environmental gradients. We quantified the robustness of taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic ersity of pollinators under simulated coextinctions triggered by specialist‐first, generalist‐first, and random plant removals. Only the robustness of phylogenetic ersity under specialist‐first removals showed a global latitudinal trend by which robustness increased towards the tropics on mainlands but increased towards the poles on islands. Generally, robustness was strongly promoted by modularity, and also directly d ened by insularity and precipitation seasonality (PS). Through the mediation of modularity, robustness was indirectly increased by actual evapotranspiration and PS, and decreased by the interaction between PS and insularity. Besides, network size and s ling area affected robustness but did not influence modularity. The indirect environmental effect on robustness via modularity was prevalent, which supports our hypothesis and reveals the importance of network structure in mediating the geographic variation of network robustness. The global pattern of robustness indicates the phylogenetic ersity of pollinators is relatively vulnerable to the loss of specialist plants in tropical islands and high‐latitude mainland compared to other regions.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date: 02-2002
DOI: 10.1086/324793
Abstract: We introduce a model for the dynamics of a patchy population in a stochastic environment and derive a criterion for its persistence. This criterion is based on the geometric mean (GM) through time of the spatial-arithmetic mean of growth rates. For the population to persist, the GM has to be >/=1. The GM increases with the number of patches (because the s ling error is reduced) and decreases with both the variance and the spatial covariance of growth rates. We derive analytical expressions for the minimum number of patches (and the maximum harvesting rate) required for the persistence of the population. As the magnitude of environmental fluctuations increases, the number of patches required for persistence increases, and the fraction of in iduals that can be harvested decreases. The novelty of our approach is that we focus on Malthusian local population dynamics with high dispersal and strong environmental variability from year to year. Unlike previous models of patchy populations that assume an infinite number of patches, we focus specifically on the effect that the number of patches has on population persistence. Our work is therefore directly relevant to patchily distributed organisms that are restricted to a small number of habitat patches.
No related grants have been discovered for Jordi Bascompte.