How does spatial and temporal variation affect webs of plant–pollinator interactions?
Like classic food webs, pollination webs can be imposingly complex. To understand how such webs are affected by internal and external drivers, we must account for changing ecological contexts at a variety of spatial and temporal scales (Alarcón et al., 2008; Petanidou et al., 2008). Whether such effects are non-linear, stochastic or consistent, and whether different pollinators or plants are substitutable, additive or non-additive in effect is not known, but such insights are essential for further empirical and theoretical progress. Moreover, the webs produced to date either treat species’ interactions as binary (present/absent) or represent the magnitude of their interaction as a function of visitation rate or pollen transport (e.g. Memmott, 1999; Olesen and Jordano, 2002; Lopezaraiza-Mikel et al., 2007). These networks have provided great insight into the complexity, community structure and evolutionary ecology of species’ interactions (e.g. Bascompte et al., 2006; Petanidou et al.,
