
An ecological community network generally has a clustering structure formed by evolutionary and ecological processes. Because females and males of a single visitor species often differ in their evolutionary and ecological relationship with flowering plants, visitor sex should affect the clustering structure of flower–visitor networks. Two related metrics are used to evaluate clustering structures: compartmentation and modularity. Compartmentation refers to the number of clearly separate subgroups, whereas modularity describes subgroups according to their number of aggregating links. Thus, compartmentation is a measure of network fragmentation and modularity is a measure of network heterogeneity. Because male visitors tend to give priority to search for mates, we hypothesized that male visitors increased compartmentation and decreased modularity compared with female visitors. By using museum specimens of flower–visitor insects together with the plant species that they were visiting, recorded at the time of collection, we constructed 11 networks for each research site and collection year, separated each into male and female subnetworks, and then compared the two metrics between them. Results showed that compartmentation was not different between them, while male subnetworks had lower modularity than female subnetworks, and strengthened modularity of species networks together with female subnetworks. These structural characteristics of male subnetworks likely reflect less choosy and less mutualistic visits of males compared with females. This might imply that the role of male visitors in maintaining flower diversity has been overlooked.
pollinator, Ecology, Evolution, mutualism, network, QH359-425, sex, compartment, QH540-549.5
pollinator, Ecology, Evolution, mutualism, network, QH359-425, sex, compartment, QH540-549.5
| selected citations These citations are derived from selected sources. This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | 8 | |
| popularity This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% | |
| influence This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically). | Average | |
| impulse This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network. | Top 10% |
