The stability-diversity debate as related to plant-pollinator networks in the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest

Studies about the relationship between diversity and stability have reached varying conclusions. I used plant-pollinator interaction data sampled from meadows in the HJ Andrews to examine this relationship. I found a clear reciprocal relationship between the number of species in an interaction network and the connectance of the network, as theoretically expected. The number of plant and pollinator species in the meadows changed between the years of 2011-2015. Using two measures of compositional similarity, I determined that more complex networks, i.e. networks with more species and a higher connectance, tend to remain more similar between years in plant and pollinator species composition, although plants show a clearer trend. This trend suggests that more complex networks are more stable.