Temporal Development and Collapse of an Arctic Plant-Pollinator Network

Topology and linkage rules of plant-pollinator networks have received much attention lately. One aspect that is difficult to study is the temporal dynamics of the network as it requires observation of how the network changes over time. Here we study an Arctic plant-pollinator network in two consecutive years using mathematical models and describe the temporal dynamics (daily assembly and disassembly of links) by simple statistical distributions. Among other things, we demonstrate that the dynamics is strikingly similar in both years despite a strong turnover in the composition of the pollinator community and the day-to-day development of the network poorly correlates with (available) weather parameters.