Effects of climate change on structure and dynamics of anecological network

Climate change does not only affect single species in isolation but entire ecological networks, most often consisting of hundreds of species and their interactions. Since climate changes are strongest in the Arctic we expect to see the most severe natural disturbances here. Fourteen years ago, a 2-year study of an entire network of 31 plant species interacting with 76 pollinating animal species at Zackenberg, NE Greenland was conducted (Olesen et al. 2008). Since then climate change has caused strong responses from both plants and animals. The previous study gives us an un-foreseen but unique opportunity to analyze climatically induced changes at network level. During 2010 and 2011 I was able to repeat this study and can now present some preliminary results from this comparison.