Integrating nocturnal and diurnal interactions in a Neotropical pollination network

Plants establish pollination interactions with different groups of animals, including nocturnal ones that establish interactions with economically valuable and culturally important crops, as well as wild plants of conservation concern. Despite the considerable number of studies addressing the structure and dynamic of pollination networks, nocturnal interactions have been relatively overlooked. Using a multilayer network approach and considering diurnal and nocturnal interactions, we aimed to understand how interactions at different periods of the day are integrated and contribute to the network structural pattern. We also aimed to highlight how multilayer networks may give a more nuanced assessment of species importance across layers.
We assembled a pollination network of an intensively studied Neotropical area by standardizing interaction data from 16 previous studies into a presence/absence (binary) network. Then we used a multilayer network approach to evaluate the network modularity...