Strong Impact of Temporal Resolution on the Structure of an Ecological Network

Most ecological networks are analysed as static structures, where all observed species and links are present simultaneously. However, this is over-simplified, because networks are temporally dynamical. We resolved an arctic, entire-season plant-flower visitor network into a temporal series of 1-day networks and compared the properties with its static equivalent based on data pooled over the entire season. Several properties differed. The nested link pattern in the static network was blurred in the dynamical version, because the characteristic long nestedness tail of flower-visitor specialists got stunted in the dynamical networks. This tail comprised a small food web of pollinators, parasitoids and hyper-parasitoids. The dynamical network had strong time delays in the transmission of direct and indirect effects among species. Twenty percent of all indirect links were impossible in the dynamical network. Consequently, properties and thus also robustness of ecological networks cannot be deduced from the static topology alone.