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In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Yet, it is unknown to what extent the functional diversity of plant and animal communities controls network assembly along environmental gradients in real-world ecosystems. Here we address this question with a unique dataset of mutualistic bird—fruit, bird—flower and insect—flower interaction networks and associated functional traits of plant and animal species sampled along broad climate and land-use gradients on Mt.
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We show that plant functional diversity is mainly limited by precipitation, while animal functional diversity is primarily limited by temperature. Furthermore, shifts in plant and animal functional diversity along the elevational gradient control the niche breadth and partitioning of the respective other trophic level. These findings reveal that climatic constraints on the functional diversity of either plants or animals determine the relative importance of bottom-up and top-down control in plant—animal interaction networks.
All species are involved in mutualistic and antagonistic interactions with other species 1. Collectively these interactions between pairs of species form complex networks that structure ecological communities 2 and maintain essential ecosystem functions, such as pollination, seed dispersal or biological control 3. If trait matching structures plant—animal interaction networks, the functional trait spaces of plants and animals should reciprocally control the niche breadth and partitioning of species in the respective other trophic level Fig.
Hence, a reduction of functional diversity in the lower trophic level is expected to cause a reduction in niche breadth and partitioning niche contraction and convergence in the higher trophic level and vice versa bottom-up and top-down control, respectively; Fig.
