TY  - JOUR
A1  - Stein, Katharina
A1  - Coulibaly, Drissa
A1  - Balima, Larba Hubert
A1  - Goetze, Dethardt
A1  - Linsenmair, Karl Eduard
A1  - Porembski, Stefan
A1  - Stenchly, Kathrin
A1  - Theodorou, Panagiotis
T1  - Plant-pollinator networks in savannas of Burkina Faso, West Africa
JF  - Diversity
N2  - West African savannas are severely threatened with intensified land use and increasing degradation. Bees are important for terrestrial biodiversity as they provide native plant species with pollination services. However, little information is available regarding their mutualistic interactions with woody plant species. In the first network study from sub-Saharan West Africa, we investigated the effects of land-use intensity and climatic seasonality on plant–bee communities and their interaction networks. In total, we recorded 5686 interactions between 53 flowering woody plant species and 100 bee species. Bee-species richness and the number of interactions were higher in the low compared to medium and high land-use intensity sites. Bee- and plant-species richness and the number of interactions were higher in the dry compared to the rainy season. Plant–bee visitation networks were not strongly affected by land-use intensity; however, climatic seasonality had a strong effect on network architecture. Null-model corrected connectance and nestedness were higher in the dry compared to the rainy season. In addition, network specialization and null-model corrected modularity were lower in the dry compared to the rainy season. Our results suggest that in our study region, seasonal effects on mutualistic network architecture are more pronounced compared to land-use change effects. Nonetheless, the decrease in bee-species richness and the number of plant–bee interactions with an increase in land-use intensity highlights the importance of savanna conservation for maintaining bee diversity and the concomitant provision of ecosystem services.
KW  - bees
KW  - community composition
KW  - connectance
KW  - land-use intensity
KW  - modularity
KW  - mutualism
KW  - number of interactions
KW  - seasonality
KW  - woody plant richness
Y1  - 2020
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-220157
SN  - 1424-2818
VL  - 13
IS  - 1
ER  -