Impact of Taxonomic and Functional Grouping on Specialization in Plant–Pollinator Networks

By examining plant–pollinator networks, researchers can create focused conservation and restoration strategies to support the long-term sustainability of both plant and pollinator populations. This research aims to (1) examine how grouping pollinators into functional groups and higher taxonomic levels affects the degree of specialization and (2) determine the proportion of attractive flowers shared among different taxonomic levels for pollinators. For this study, we analyzed 93 plant–pollinator networks. We identified the family and order for each insect pollinator to establish taxonomic groupings. At this stage, interactions related to species at the family and order levels were aggregated. For functional grouping, we classified insect pollinators such as bees, beetles, flies, moths, butterflies, ants, and others. To measure network specialization, we employed the H2 metric, where H2 values range between 0 and 1, with 1 indicating maximum specialization. We then utilized the t-test to determine if there were significant differences in network specialization between different functional and taxonomic networks. Additionally, we calculated the degree of overlap between plants identified as the most attractive across four levels of taxonomic and functional classifications within each network. Our findings revealed that the degree of specialization within plant–pollinator networks varied across different levels of taxonomic and functional grouping. Additionally, we observed significant differences in the selection of attractive plants depending on the level of classification employed. Certain plants identified as attractive at the species level may not necessarily be recognized at higher taxonomic levels or within functional groups.