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Summary: A network model for plantpollinator
community assembly
Colin Campbella,1
, Suann Yangb
, Réka Alberta,b
, and Katriona Sheab
Departments of a
Physics and b
Biology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
Edited by Leo P. Kadanoff, The James Franck Institute, Chicago, IL, and approved November 23, 2010 (received for review June 23, 2010)
Community assembly models, usually constructed for food webs,
are an important component of our understanding of how ecol-
ogical communities are formed. However, models for mutualistic
community assembly are still needed, especially because these
communities are experiencing significant anthropogenic distur-
bances that affect their biodiversity. Here, we present a unique
network model that simulates the colonization and extinction pro-
cess of mutualistic community assembly. We generate regional
source pools of species interaction networks on the basis of sta-
tistical properties reported in the literature. We develop a dynamic
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