Dynamics of coupled mutualistic and antagonistic interactions, and their implications for ecosystem management

Understanding the interplay of antagonistic and mutualistic interactions is an important challenge for predicting the fate of ecological communities. So far, studies of propagation of disturbances have focused on a single interaction type (antagonistic or mutualistic), leaving out part of the natural diversity. We develop a model that describes the dynamics of a plant species interacting with one antagonistic (e.g. an herbivore) and one mutualistic (e.g. a pollinator) species confronted to a perturbation to assess how each interaction type will affect the other. We analyze the effect of additional mortality as a press perturbation acting on the plant's partners. We study how the intensity of the disturbance and the relative sensitivities of partner species determine community structure, as well as extinction orders. We show that due to indirect effects between the two types of interactions, additional mortality on both pollinators and herbivores can either decrease or increase their densities. The presence of pollinators can stabilize the antagonistic interaction by preventing cyclic dynamics in the plant-herbivore system. We propose explanatory mechanisms based on indirect effects and discuss the implications of our results for the conservation of interactions and communities. Our results suggest that, in agricultural landscapes, direct effects of insecticides on herbivore densities can be fully offset by indirect effects mediated through pollinators. The loss of pollinators, due to insecticide use, can also destabilize the dynamics of insect herbivores.