AOBPreview originally published online on March 21, 2009
Annals of Botany 2009 103(9):1445-1457; doi:10.1093/aob/mcp057
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company 2009
This article appears in the following Annals of Botany issue: Special Issue: Plant-Pollinator Interactions [View the issue table of contents]
Uniting pattern and process in plant–animal mutualistic networks: a review
1 Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas, CONICET, CC 507, 5500 Mendoza, Argentina
2 Instituto de Ciencias Básicas, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Centro Universitario, M5502JMA Mendoza, Argentina
3 Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Biozentrum, University of Würzburg, D-97074 Würzburg, Germany
4 IMBIV and Centro de Investigaciones Entomológicas de Córdoba, CONICET–Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, FCEFN, Av. Vélez Sarsfield 1611, X5016GCA Córdoba, Argentina
* For correspondence. E-mail dvazquez{at}mendoza-conicet.gov.ar
Received: 1 November 2008 Returned for revision: 15 December 2008 Accepted: 21 January 2009 Published electronically: 22 March 2009
Background: Ecologists and evolutionary biologists are becoming increasingly interested in networks as a framework to study plant–animal mutualisms within their ecological context. Although such focus on networks has brought about important insights into the structure of these interactions, relatively little is still known about the mechanisms behind these patterns.
Scope: The aim in this paper is to offer an overview of the mechanisms influencing the structure of plant–animal mutualistic networks. A brief summary is presented of the salient network patterns, the potential mechanisms are discussed and the studies that have evaluated them are reviewed. This review shows that researchers of plant–animal mutualisms have made substantial progress in the understanding of the processes behind the patterns observed in mutualistic networks. At the same time, we are still far from a thorough, integrative mechanistic understanding. We close with specific suggestions for directions of future research, which include developing methods to evaluate the relative importance of mechanisms influencing network patterns and focusing research efforts on selected representative study systems throughout the world.
Key words: Ant–plant interactions, forbidden links, mutualism, neutrality, trait matching, plant–animal interactions, pollination, seed dispersal
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
Related articles in Ann Bot:
- ContentSnapshots
Ann Bot 2009 103: i.[Extract] [Full Text]
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  R. J. Mitchell, R. J. Flanagan, B. J. Brown, N. M. Waser, and J. D. Karron New frontiers in competition for pollination Ann. Bot., June 1, 2009; 103(9): 1403 - 1413. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
|
|
R. J. Mitchell, R. E. Irwin, R. J. Flanagan, and J. D. Karron Ecology and evolution of plant-pollinator interactions Ann. Bot., June 1, 2009; 103(9): 1355 - 1363. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|