  Global environmental change is affecting species distribution and their
interactions with other species. In particular, the main drivers of
environmental change strongly affect the strength of interspecific interactions
with considerable consequences to biodiversity. However, extrapolating the
effects observed on pair-wise interactions to entire ecological networks is
challenging. Here we propose a framework to estimate the tolerance to changes
in the strength of mutualistic interaction that species in mutualistic networks
can sustain before becoming extinct. We identify the scenarios where generalist
species can be the least tolerant. We show that the least tolerant species
across different scenarios do not appear to have uniquely common
characteristics. Species tolerance is extremely sensitive to the direction of
change in the strength of mutualistic interaction, as well as to the observed
mutualistic trade-offs between the number of partners and the strength of the
interactions.
