Data from: Evolutionary history as a driver of ecological networks: a case study of plant-hummingbird interactions

Multiple factors drive species interactions in ecological networks, such as morphological barriers, spatio-temporal distribution, abundances and evolutionary histories of species. Novel methods are making it possible to evaluate the relative importance of each of these drivers. However, the lack of appropriate methods has prevented evaluating the extent to which interaction networks are shaped by species’ evolutionary histories. This study includes the evolutionary histories of species among the potential drivers of interactions, allowing the comparative analysis of its importance in structuring ecological networks. We hypothesized different possible phylogenetic scenarios to predict frequencies of interactions between species by combining concepts from the fields of ecological networks and ecophylogenetics. The usage of these scenarios is illustrated in a plant-hummingbird interaction network database from the Atlantic Forest, southeastern Brazil. We first evaluated which phylogenetic hypotheses better predict the observed network; subsequently, we evaluated the relative importance of species evolutionary histories, abundances, and matching on species morphologies and phenologies as drivers of their frequencies of interactions. The results suggest that the evolutionary histories of hummingbirds are more important than the species abundances in structuring the studied plant-hummingbird network but less important than the morphological and phenological matching among species. The approach developed here offers the potential to advance our understanding of the multiple factors structuring ecological networks.

生态网络中的物种互作受多种因素驱动，包括物种间的形态阻隔、时空分布格局、种群丰度以及演化历史。新兴研究方法现已可对这些驱动因子的相对重要性进行量化评估。然而，此前因缺乏合适的研究手段，学界难以评估物种演化历史在多大程度上塑造了物种互作网络。本研究将物种演化历史纳入互作的潜在驱动因子范畴，从而可开展其在生态网络构建过程中重要性的比较分析。我们结合生态网络学与系统发育生态学(ecophylogenetics)领域的理论框架，提出了多种可用于预测物种间互作频率的系统发育情景假说。我们以巴西东南部大西洋森林(Atlantic Forest)的植物-蜂鸟互作网络数据库为例，展示了上述情景假说的应用路径。研究首先评估了哪种系统发育假说能更精准地匹配观测到的互作网络；随后，我们量化分析了物种演化历史、种群丰度以及物种间形态与物候匹配度作为互作频率驱动因子的相对重要性。结果显示，在本次研究的植物-蜂鸟互作网络构建中，蜂鸟的演化历史的重要性高于种群丰度，但低于物种间的形态与物候匹配度。本研究提出的分析方法，有望推动学界对生态网络构建多重驱动因子的认知深化。