The Structure of Plant-Animal Mutualistic Networks

Plant-animal mutualistic networks can be described as bipartite graphs depicting the interactions between two distinct sets: plants and animals. These mutualistic networks have been found to be highly structured. Specifically, they show a nested pattern in which specialists interact with proper subsets of the species generalists interact with. This pattern is important for understanding coevolution in species-rich communities which can be reduced neither to pairs of coevolving species nor to diffuse, randomly-interacting assemblages. We discuss the dynamic implications of network structure from the points of view of coevolution, community ecology, and conservation biology.