Meeting Abstract
Climate change and sea level rise exert broad effects on plant-pollinator (p-p) interactions, especially in phenology and frequency of disturbance in coastal pollinator communities. Because coastal habitats face rapid change due to inundation from sea level rise and physical stressors (e.g., salinity or temperature), it becomes important to understand the species that rely on these habitats as support for conservation efforts. The goal of this study is to provide a clearer picture of coastal pollinator networks by describing summer p-p interactions in coastal habitats as a foundation for continuing studies that will compare pollination networks on different islands. For this study, we studied a summer coastal pollination network in the narrow dune habitats (beach berm to marsh) at Kalloni Bay on Lesvos Island. We collected insect-plant visitation pairs from four 100-meter transects of dune habitat in June 2019. Plant-pollinator interactions were analyzed using the Bipartite package in R. Summer pollinators in our samples included Coleoptera, Diptera, Hymenoptera, and Lepidoptera. Most of these were generalist foragers (d’=0.067-0.392) with a low pollination service index (PSI=0.094-0.110). Similarly, most pollinators were peripherals, and few played the role of connectives or module hubs. Coastal habitats on Lesvos Island appear to harbor a large diversity of summer pollinators with low specialization and modularity.
