Anthropogenic impacts on plant-pollinator networks of tropical forests: implications for pollinators coextinction

Anthropogenic changes in natural habitats are one of the main causes of disruptions in plant-pollinator interaction due to plant community alterations, which can affect pollinator persistence. However, pollinators can expand their interactions by exploring alternative resources to compensate for already-established partners’ loss. Ecological networks have been used to investigate interactions between species and the effects of environmental impacts on them. However, although tropical forests are threatened by anthropogenic activities worldwide, there is a limited representation of tropical pollination networks in existing evidence. We surveyed literature data for plant-pollinator networks from different tropical regions to assess the impacts of land-use changes on pollinator interaction patterns and their resistance to coextinctions. We hypothesized that pollinators in anthropized tropical forests establish interactions with more partner plants than pollinators in old-growth forests; pollinator networks in anthropized tropical forests are more nested than networks in old-growth forests; pollinators in anthropized tropical forests are more resistant to the extinction of their partners than pollinators in old-growth forests. Contrary to our expectations, we did not observe an effect of anthropization on the structural organization of networks. Furthermore, pollinators in disturbed forests established interactions with fewer partners and were less robust to coextinctions than in old-growth forests. However, there was no difference in the establishment of interactions or the resistance to coextinctions between pollinators in converted forests and pollinators in old-growth or disturbed forests. These results indicate the negative effects of anthropization on establishing interactions and pollinator resistance to coextinctions despite no impact on network assembly.