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Las altas temperaturas están provocando que las lagunas y las marismas de Doñana pierdan agua rápidamente

La superficie inundada en la marisma es de un 78% pero la profundidad es escasa. Por otra parte, sólo el 1,9% de las lagunas temporales están inundadas. Las precipitaciones crean una oportunidad...

Traffic noise causes lifelong harm to baby birds

A study with CSIC participation reveals for the first time that car noise harms individuals throughout their lifetime even years after exposure

Illegal wildlife trade, a serious problem for biodiversity and human health

A research team led by the Doñana BIological Station and the University Pablo de Olavide have detected wild-caught pets in 95% of the localities in the Neotropic and warns of the risk of zoonotic...

Urbanization and loss of woody vegetation are changing key traits of arthropod communities

Urbanization is favouring smaller beetle species and larger spider species with greater dispersal capacity.

The loss of woody areas is linked to a decline in the duration of the activity...

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Geographical variation in mutualistic networks

Geographical variation in mutualistic networks

Although species and their interactions in unison represent biodiversity and all the ecological and evolutionary processes associated with life, biotic interactions have, contrary to species, rarely been integrated into the concepts of spatial ß-diversity. Here, ß-diversity of ecological networks is examined using pollination networks sampled across the Canary Islands. Adjacent and distant communities are showed to be more and less similar, respectively, in their composition of plants, pollinators and interactions than expected from random distributions. Replacement of species is revealed as the major driver of interaction turnover and this contribution increases with distance. Finally, species-specific partner compositions (here called partner fidelity) deviate from random partner use, but vary as a result of ecological and geographical variables. In particular, breakdown of partner fidelity was facilitated by increasing geographical distance, changing abundances and changing linkage levels, but was not related to the geographical distribution of the species. This highlights the importance of space when comparing communities of interacting species and may stimulate a rethinking of the spatial interpretation of interaction networks. Moreover, geographical interaction dynamics and its causes are important in efforts to anticipate effects of large-scale changes, such as anthropogenic disturbances.. informacion[at]ebd.csic.es Trøjelsgaard et al (2015) Geographical variation in mutualistic networks: similarity, turnover and partner fidelity Proc. R. Soc. B 282: 20142925. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2014.2925