Non-native species pose a signi cant threat to biotic interactions, such as plantpollinators,
and associated ecosystem functions. Ecological restoration is commonly
used to mitigate or revert the impact of non-native species. The removal of nonnative
plants is one frequently used restoration approach to minimise competition
for resources between native and non-native plants, which facilitates the recovery
of native plant communities. Many aspects of how ecological restoration impacts
native ecosystems are not well understood. For example, the conditions that allow
ecological communities to thrive after restoration can take years to develop. Although
restoration interventions ideally aim to address most impacts of non-native
species, we know little about the response of non-target species, both native and
non-native.
In this thesis, I explore the effects of non-native species and ecological restoration on
plant-pollinator communities and pollination function on the island of Mahé, Seychelles,
in the Western Indian Ocean. I used a community-level restoration experiment
with honey bee (Apis mellifera) supplementation to study the medium-term
responses of plant-pollinator interaction networks to management interventions. Initial
restoration took place in 2011, and the datasets used here were collected across
two consecutive years (2018/19 and 2019/20).