The role of phenotypic plasticity in shaping ecological networks

Abstract

Plasticity‐mediated changes in interaction dynamics and structure may scale up and affect the ecological network in which the plastic species are embedded. Despite their potential relevance for understanding the effects of plasticity on ecological communities, these effects have seldom been analysed. We argue here that, by boosting the magnitude of intra‐individual phenotypic variation, plasticity may have three possible direct effects on the interactions that the plastic species maintains with other species in the community: may expand the interaction niche, may cause a shift from one interaction niche to another or may even cause the colonization of a new niche. The combined action of these three factors can scale to the community level and eventually expresses itself as a modification in the topology and functionality of the entire ecological network. We propose that this causal pathway can be more widespread than previously thought and may explain how interaction niches evolve quickly in response to rapid changes in environmental conditions. The implication of this idea is not solely eco‐evolutionary but may also help to understand how ecological interactions rewire and evolve in response to global change.

Competitor-induced plasticity modifies the interactions and predicted competitive outcomes between annual plants

“…Our results also illustrate the possibility that the history of interactions a species experiences may influence the strength of the competition affecting its growth in the future. One research direction emerging from our work would involve building mathematical models where each individual has a "memory" (encoded by their morphology) of the competition they have experienced [63,66,67,68,69,70]. A similar approach has been proposed in the context of trait-based priority effects, in which the strength of species interactions shifts as a function of trait values which themselves depend on community composition [71,72].…”

“…Because we only measured a subset of morphological traits, our analysis of how trait changes affected interaction strengths remains preliminary. Future work should seek to quantify how plasticity in a broader suite of plant traits impacts interaction strengths [62, 63].…”

Downscaling mutualistic networks from species to individuals reveals consistent interaction niches and roles within plant populations

“…Even so, most previous work has focused on antagonistic interactions such as predator-prey trophic niches (Bolnick et al 2003, Araujo et al 2011, Costa-Pereira et al 2018, Costa-Pereira et al 2019). It was only until very recently that niche theory was applied for understanding individual variation in mutualistic interactions (Tur et al 2014, Albrecht et al 2018, Phillips et al 2020, Koffel et al 2021, Arroyo-Correa et al 2023, Gómez et al 2023). For this study, we rely on the concept of ‘interaction niche ’as the space defined by the set of species with which a population can interact (Fig.…”

Variations in the plasticity of functional traits indicate the differential impacts of abiotic and biotic factors on the structure and growth of trees in tropical dry forest fragments

“…Plant functional traits are a strong alternative compared to taxonomic identity for understanding plant performance and complex plant–plant and plant–environment interactions ( Adler et al., 2014 ; Levine, 2016 ; Salguero-Gómez et al., 2016 ; Kunstler et al., 2016 ; Lourenço et al., 2022 ; Gómez et al., 2023 ). Moreover, along with genetic variations and developmental instability, changes in environmental conditions also induce variations in functional traits (i.e., phenotypic plasticity), and these variations enhance the ability to cope with shifting environments, where the species with greater variability adapt to a wide shift in environmental conditions compared to the species with lesser variability ( Mitchell et al., 2016 ; Fox et al., 2019 ; Hofhansl et al., 2021 ; Kramp et al., 2022 ).…”

“…Moreover, anthropogenic disturbances, land-use changes, and other activities, such as biomass exploitation by harvesting and grazing and soil fertility management, also have a large impact on the structure and function of tree-dominant ecosystems. Therefore, investigation of the variations in functional traits due to changing soil water and nutrient contents along disturbance gradients could help us understand the vulnerability of tropical trees to environmental changes ( Anderegg et al., 2013 ; Zambrano et al., 2019 ; Gómez et al., 2023 ).…”