TY - JOUR A1 - Albrecht, Jörg A1 - Classen, Alice A1 - Vollstädt, Maximilian A1 - Mayr, Antonia A1 - Mollel, Neduvoto Piniel A1 - Schellenberger Costa, David A1 - Dulle, Hamadi Iddi A1 - Fischer, Markus A1 - Hemp, Andreas A1 - Howell, Kim M. A1 - Kleyer, Michael A1 - Nauss, Thomas A1 - Peters, Marcell K. A1 - Tschapka, Marco A1 - Steffan-Dewenter, Ingolf A1 - Böhning-Gaese, Katrin A1 - Schleuning, Matthias T1 - Plant and animal functional diversity drive mutualistic network assembly across an elevational gradient T2 - Nature Communications N2 - Species’ functional traits set the blueprint for pair-wise interactions in ecological networks. Yet, it is unknown to what extent the functional diversity of plant and animal communities controls network assembly along environmental gradients in real-world ecosystems. Here we address this question with a unique dataset of mutualistic bird–fruit, bird–flower and insect–flower interaction networks and associated functional traits of 200 plant and 282 animal species sampled along broad climate and land-use gradients on Mt. Kilimanjaro. We show that plant functional diversity is mainly limited by precipitation, while animal functional diversity is primarily limited by temperature. Furthermore, shifts in plant and animal functional diversity along the elevational gradient control the niche breadth and partitioning of the respective other trophic level. These findings reveal that climatic constraints on the functional diversity of either plants or animals determine the relative importance of bottom-up and top-down control in plant–animal interaction networks. KW - Community ecology KW - Ecological networks KW - Ecology KW - Ecosystem ecology Y1 - 2018 UR - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/48681 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-486815 SN - 2041-1723 N1 - Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. VL - 9 IS - 1, Art. 3177 SP - 1 EP - 10 PB - Nature Publishing Group UK CY - [London] ER -