Plant-pollinator coextinctions and the loss of plant functional and phylogenetic diversity

Plant-pollinator coextinctions are likely to become more frequent as habitat alteration and climate change continue to threaten pollinators. The consequences of the resulting collapse of plant communities will depend partly on how quickly plant functional and phylogenetic diversity decline following...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2013-11, Vol.8 (11), p.e81242
Main Authors: Vieira, Marcos Costa, Cianciaruso, Marcus Vinicius, Almeida-Neto, Mário
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biodiversity
Bioinformatics
Climate change
Conservation
Ecological monitoring
Ecological studies
Ecology
Ecosystems
Endangered & extinct species
Extinct species
Extinction
Extinction, Biological
Flowers & plants
Models, Statistical
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
Plant communities
Plant diversity
Plant Physiological Phenomena
Plant populations
Plant reproduction
Plants - classification
Pollination
Pollinators
Science
Simulation
Species diversity
Stochastic Processes
Wildlife conservation
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Summary:Plant-pollinator coextinctions are likely to become more frequent as habitat alteration and climate change continue to threaten pollinators. The consequences of the resulting collapse of plant communities will depend partly on how quickly plant functional and phylogenetic diversity decline following pollinator extinctions. We investigated the functional and phylogenetic consequences of pollinator extinctions by simulating coextinctions in seven plant-pollinator networks coupled with independent data on plant phylogeny and functional traits. Declines in plant functional diversity were slower than expected under a scenario of random extinctions, while phylogenetic diversity often decreased faster than expected by chance. Our results show that plant functional diversity was relatively robust to plant-pollinator coextinctions, despite the underlying rapid loss of evolutionary history. Thus, our study suggests the possibility of uncoupled responses of functional and phylogenetic diversity to species coextinctions, highlighting the importance of considering both dimensions of biodiversity explicitly in ecological studies and when planning for the conservation of species and interactions.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0081242