ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional Plant Ecology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1552422
This article is part of the Research TopicFloral Adaptations and Pollinator Dynamics in a Rapidly Changing EnvironmentView all 11 articles
Spatio-temporal patterns in floral resources and plant-pollinator network structure in the Alaskan Arctic
Provisionally accepted
- Colorado College, Colorado Springs, United States
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Predicting shifts in plant-pollinator communities as a result of warming requires an accurate understanding of floral availability, insect activity, and spatio-temporal patterns of plant-insect interaction. Plant-insect visitor network studies from the High Arctic have demonstrated high generalization and rapid temporal turnover, yet comparable data are lacking for the Low Arctic.We worked in two tundra plant community types on the North Slope of Alaska in 2022 and 2023 to construct the first plant-insect visitor networks for this region of the Arctic and document temporal patterns of floral resource availability and insect visitation. We found temporal differences in the timing of floral availability between community types. Both floral density and the number of species in anthesis peaked earlier in the dry heath tundra compared to the moist acidic tundra. In addition, Hymenopteran visitation rates showed a bimodal peak (early-and lateseason) while Dipteran visitation rates showed a unimodal pattern. Network complexity peaked earlier in the dry compared to the moist community. Our results suggest that temporal heterogeneity in floral resources between plant community types may increase the duration of floral availability for insects at a landscape scale. Given this region's low species diversity and increasing vulnerability to extreme weather events, spatio-temporal heterogeneity in floral resources may play a critical role in the resiliency of this system.
Keywords: Low Arctic, Floral resources, Plant-visitor networks, Phenology, Pollination, Tundra
Received: 28 Dec 2024; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Khorsand, Ginn and Sancier-Barbosa. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Roxaneh S Khorsand, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, United States
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