Adaptive rewiring and temperature tolerance shape the architecture of plant-pollinator networks globally
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Rising environmental temperatures are rapidly reshaping plant pollinator communities by altering species traits and interaction patterns. We develop a simple eco evolutionary model that integrates species specific temperature tolerance curves with phenotype-based interaction dynamics. Across temperature gradients, species adaptively rewire, that is, they change their interaction partners. This rewiring is an emergent property of our model, driven by temperature mediated selection and coevolutionary trait matching. As temperature increases, our model predicts a consistent decline in network level specialization, alongside increasing connectance and nestedness which are signatures of structural re-organization. These predictions are supported by empirical patterns from 165 plant pollinator networks worldwide, where mean annual temperature correlates positively with connectance and nestedness, and negatively with network specialisation. Our findings suggest that temperature-driven trait evolution and emergent adaptive rewiring govern the assembly and architecture of mutualistic networks. By bridging dynamical eco evolutionary theory with global empirical data, this work reveals the central role of trait based processes in structuring biodiversity under ongoing and accelerating climate warming.
