Mutualistic Networks in Time and Space

This chapter reviews the combination of empirical and theoretical work describing the dynamics of mutualistic networks in time and space. It also addresses what components of these networks are time and space invariant. On a daily basis, network assembly is intermediate between preferential and random attachment. In a year-to-year scale, there is a very high turnover in species and interactions across years, and yet the global structure of the network is quite constant. Across space, theoretical models predict that plantanimal interactions increase spatial heterogeneity. The spatial and temporal dimensions are also interesting from a more methodological point of view to assess the effect of sampling effort. Interaction accumulation curves are the equivalent of species accumulation curves used in biodiversity monitoring and can be used to assess the role of sampling effort. But important natural history details explain a fraction of the nonobserved links. Therefore, treating missing interactions as the expected unique result of sampling bias would miss important components of the ecological and (co)evolutionary basis of mutualistic networks.