Stability and structure of adaptive plant-pollinator networks under climate change

Climate change directly affects species' physiological traits and indirectly alters community structure. However, how adaptive foraging modulates ecological network responses to climate change is an important question. Here, we investigate the interactive effects of temperature shifts and pollinator adaptive foraging on the stability and structure of mutualistic networks. We assess changes in species persistence and network properties-including community complexity, connectance, modularity, nestedness, niche overlap, and specialisation-across a thermal gradient. Our findings reveal that adaptive foraging can reshape network stability and structure by mediating species' physiological responses to temperature. Adaptive foraging enhances the persistence of generalist pollinators under extreme thermal stress while supporting specialists near their thermal optima. In both adaptive and non-adaptive communities, rising temperatures modify key network metrics, with extreme high temperatures increasing connectance, modularity, niche overlap, and specialisation. Responses to extreme low temperatures depend on the form of thermal performance curves, exhibiting U-shaped patterns under Gaussian functions and monotonic increases under asymmetric formulations. Nestedness declines linearly with warming in adaptive communities regardless of thermal performance shape. Together, these findings elucidate how temperature and adaptive foraging jointly determine the stability and architecture of mutualistic networks, underscoring the importance of behavioral adaptation in maintaining ecosystem resilience under climate change.