Department of Entomology

Title: “Pollination networks: structure, function, and
responses to perturbations."

Abstract: How pollination and other ecological networks balance functioning with the redundancy needed for stability is an ongoing mystery. I will discuss ongoing modeling work to unravel how topological and quantitative network structures potentially interact to allow networks to achieve this tricky balance. Another big gap in our understanding of networks is how empirical networks, not just theoretical ones, respond to perturbations. I will discuss empirical work including experiments to assess the loss of species and whole-community phenological
mismatches in pollination networks.