Hello everyone,
I am currently engaged in a doctoral project focusing on the analysis of plant-pollinator interactions in various types of areas, including natural parks, conventional agricultural farms, organic farms, and a Natura 2000 site. I have collected data using a variable transect of an hour and a half, concentrating on areas with the highest flower presence.
I am now in the data analysis phase and am using the bipartite package in R to conduct network analyses. While I have explored various indices, I would like to benefit from your experiences and insights to identify the most appropriate indices for assessing the biodiversity of both plants and pollinators in agricultural and natural settings.
Specifically, I am seeking suggestions on specific indices for weighted networks that can effectively capture the complexity of interactions. Additionally, I am looking for approaches or indices to assess the health status of agricultural and natural areas. The goal is to provide practical guidelines and useful information for managers of natural parks and agricultural enterprises.
I would be extremely grateful for your valuable contributions and advice on these aspects. Thank you very much in advance for your collaboration.
Thank you all!
Fortunato Fulvio Bitonto
Hello Fortunato,
I have done some similar studies as you have explained.
Aligning the goals of the project with your acquired database, you may focus on the species level strengths and interacting partners (effective) in different habitats in both the perspective of plants and pollinators. These effectively will help you to identify the important links (subjected to focused commonality and speciality). The result will help you to formularise important seed sets to thrive the present health system in individual Habitats.
as well as you may also look into the community based indices as the community saturation of pollinators in each habitats and in overall system should give you conclusive remarks on the wholistic approach of health assessment and future conservation aspects.
p.s. Each of the indices provided in the Bipartite package has its own value and very well documented. As per your requirements you should look into indices individually for a better understanding and visualisa of the whole network properties.
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