Poli-Stability: comprehensive assessment of stability in pollination communities

Species and ecological interactions are disappearing at alarming rates with unknown effects on key ecosystem functions basic for human well being, as pollination. Project PoliS (comprehensive assessment of stability in pollination communities) aims to combine the forces of an expert in the study of stability in complex networks (researcher) and a world leader on pollination services (supervisor) to address one of the most relevant problems in ecology nowadays: how plant-pollinator communities respond to environmental changes. By bridging the classical divide between the empirical and theoretical frameworks to study ecological stability, and using as case study detailed data on 12 communities in the Doñana natural reserve (southern Spain) across a gradient of landscape fragmentation monitored over seven years, this project put forwards solutions to comprehensively quantify the response of pollination communities to environmental perturbations, and elucidates the mechanisms by which pollination communities withstand global change pressures and achieve different axes of stability. The novelty and high transferability of the methodology, in addition to the relevance of the question, make of this project an unique opportunity to advance in the prediction of how pollination communities will respond to a changing world.