PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Aoife Cantwell-Jones
AU  - Keith Larson
AU  - Alan Ward
AU  - Olivia K. Bates
AU  - Tara Cox
AU  - Frida Brannlund
AU  - Charlotte Gibbons
AU  - Ryan Richardson
AU  - Jason M. Tylianakis
AU  - Jacob Johansson
AU  - Richard J. Gill
TI  - Mapping trait versus species turnover reveals spatiotemporal variation in functional redundancy in a plant-pollinator network
AID  - 10.1101/2021.11.29.470359
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.11.29.470359
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/30/2021.11.29.470359.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/11/30/2021.11.29.470359.full
AB  - Functional overlap between species (redundancy) shapes competitive and mutualistic interactions, determining community responses to perturbations. Most studies view functional redundancy as static, even though individuals within species vary in traits over seasonal or spatial gradients. Consequently, we lack knowledge on trait turnover within species, how functional redundancy spatiotemporally varies, and when and where interaction networks are vulnerable to functional loss. Studying an Arctic bumblebee community, we investigated how body-size turnover over elevation and season shapes their host-plant interactions, and test how sensitive networks are to sequentially losing body-size groups. With trait turnover being larger than species, we found: i) late-season networks were less specialised when nodes comprised functionally similar bumblebees; ii) removal of bumblebee-body-size groups over species accelerated coextinction of host plants, with the magnitude varying in space and time. We demonstrate functional redundancy can vary spatiotemporally, and functional loss impacts interaction partners more than expected from species loss alone.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.