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Robustness of Plant-Pollinator Mutualistic Networks to Phenological Mismatches

Payrató, Claudia (Supervisor: Ramasco, J.J.)
Master Thesis , (2016)

Mutualistic interactions conform the skeleton of many systems widespread in nature, with abundant examples ranging rom the economical context to the biological world. The paradigmatic case of study -and ours- is ecological networks. The singular composition of their interactions is known to exhibit unique resilient features, playing a critical role to the preservation of earth's biodiversity and ecosystem's robustness. However, the extent to which the so-called mutualistic networks might be affected by global change has still not been well-established. Accordingly, in this Master Thesis we attempt to measure the robustness of a plant-pollinator community to shifts in their life cycles (phenologies). By borrowing tools from population dynamics and statistical mechanics, we characterise a phase transition triggered by phenological noise in a non-spatially extended model. Our results suggest the existence of a second order non-equilibrium phase transition. Moreover, simulations on an empirically-based network successfully reproduce some previously known ecological traits. All in all, many critical features attributed to second-order transitions such as scaling or universality remained to be asserted, thus demanding for further investigations.