Biology subjects

B. Lanuza, J.

Publications and source records attributed to B. Lanuza, J..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2026

Optimizing plant species selection for automated monitoring of plant-pollinator interactions

Automated monitoring camera systems offer an efficient approach for quantifying pollinator biodiversity and plant-pollinator interactions, but financial and logistical constraints limit the number of flowering plant species that can be monitored. Using a large European database of plant-pollinator networks, we evaluated whether plant subsampling can capture key metrics of interest (i.e. pollinator richness and network structure). We compared abundance-based, flower-shape-informed, phylogenetically informed and random plant sampling. Abundance-based sampling consistently outperformed random sampling, while adding flower shape provided little additional benefit and phylogenetic selection performed similarly to random sampling. Overall, monitoring 12-15 flowering species was sufficient to characterize key network properties across varying community sizes. Performance of abundance-based plant sampling declined in species-rich communities and when rare but highly attractive plants were present in the community, while a specific subset of pollinator species was consistently missed even by the best sampling strategy. Based on their relative contribution to interactions within each network, only 12.6% of pollinator species accounted for 95% of interactions, suggesting that AI classifiers could prioritize a relatively small subset of species. Our results provide practical guidance for designing efficient camera-based pollinator monitoring schemes at large spatial scales.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2026

Seasonal variation mediates the importance of species attributes in plant-pollinator interactions

Predicting species interactions remains a major challenge, as multiple species attributes operate simultaneously and their relative importance may vary seasonally and with temporal resolution. Here, we assess how the relative contributions of abundance, trait matching, and phenology to plant-pollinator interactions vary through a flowering season and across temporal resolutions using interaction data from three European botanical gardens. We show that predictive models explain a substantial proportion of variation in visitation patterns, with floral and pollinator abundances consistently explaining most variation across the flowering season. Trait matching between pollinator body size and floral size also contributes to visitation patterns, playing a secondary but persistent role in shaping interactions, while phenology plays a relatively minor role at broader temporal resolutions but becomes more important at finer temporal scales. Additionally, null models accounting for spatio-temporal variation in floral and pollinator abundance reveal consistent patterns of pollinator preference and avoidance, indicating that abundance alone cannot explain the observed interaction patterns. Our results show that seasonal variation and temporal resolution differentially shape the importance of species attributes, highlighting the need for multi-variable approaches that account for temporal dynamics to accurately explain and predict ecological interactions.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2021

The non-random structure of multi-trophic ecological interactions maximizes species coexistence within ecologically realistic constraints

Theory posits that the persistence of species in ecological communities is shaped by their interactions within and across trophic guilds. However, we lack empirical evaluations of how the structure, strength, and sign of biotic interactions drive the potential to coexist in diverse multi-trophic communities. Here we model community feasibility domains, a theoretically-informed measure of multi-species coexistence probability, from grassland communities comprising more than 45 species on average from three trophic guilds (plants, pollinators, and herbivores). Contrary to our hypothesis, increasing community complexity, measured either as the number of guilds or community richness, did not decrease community feasibility. Rather, we observed that high degrees of species self-regulation and niche partitioning allow maintaining larger levels of community feasibility and higher species persistence in more diverse communities. Our results show that biotic interactions within and across guilds are not random in nature and both structures significantly contribute to maintaining multi-trophic diversity.

ecology↗

bioRxiv2020

Recipient and donor characteristics govern the hierarchical structure of heterospecific pollen competition networks

O_LIPollinator sharing can have negative consequences for plant fitness with the arrival of foreign pollen, yet responses are often variable among species. Plant traits and relatedness of donor and recipient species have been suggested to drive the variations in plant fitness, but how they shape the structure of pollen competition networks has been overlooked at the community level. C_LIO_LITo understand the importance of traits and relatedness we conducted a controlled glasshouse experiment with an artificial co-flowering community. We performed 900 reciprocal crosses by experimentally transferring pollen among 10 species belonging to three different plant families. C_LIO_LIWe found a significant reduction in seed set for 67% of the crosses, driven largely by recipient traits and the interaction between recipient-donor traits under specific circumstances of trait-matching. These traits and their asymmetries among species led to a hierarchical (or transitive) structure of pollen competition with clear winners and losers depending on specific combination of traits. C_LIO_LIA greater understanding of the importance of trait matching and asymmetries among donor and recipient plant species will facilitate knowledge of the mechanisms underlying foreign pollen impacts upon plant reproductive fitness. This will require a shift from pairwise to community level interactions. C_LI

ecology↗