How do visitation patterns vary among pollinators in relation to floral display and floral design in a generalist pollination system?

Thompson, John D.

doi:10.1007/s004420000531

Cited by 193 publications

(182 citation statements)

References 58 publications

(60 reference statements)

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“…Dioecious plants tend to have small flowers pollinated by unspecialized, opportunistic insects and fleshy fruit dispersed by animals (Bawa, 1980; Ibarra‐Manriquez & Oyama, 1992). Thompson (2001) reported that the number of visits by opportunistic pollinators was positively related to the number of open flowers in a patch of a shrub species, but such a positive relationship between floral display and visitation rate was not true for specialist pollinators. The precocity of dioecious plants may facilitate their reproduction by attracting generalist pollinators via increased reproductive plant density.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dioecious plants are more precocious than cosexual plants: A comparative study of relative sizes at the onset of sexual reproduction in woody species

Ohya

Nanami

Itoh

2017

Ecology and Evolution

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The reproductive capacities of dioecious plant species may be limited by severe pollen limitation and narrow seed shadows for the two reasons. First, they are unable to self‐pollinate, and seed production occurs only with pollinator movement from males to females. Second, only 50% of the individuals in populations contribute to seed production. Despite these handicaps, dioecious plants maintain their populations in plant communities with cooccurring cosexual plants, and no substantial difference in population growth rates has been found between dioecious and cosexual plants. Hence, dioecious plants are thought to mitigate these disadvantages by adopting ecological traits, such as insect pollination, animal‐dispersed fleshy fruits, and precocious flowering. We studied the relationship between flowering and plant size in 30 woody species with different sex expressions, leaf habits, fruit types, and maximum plant sizes. The study site was located in an evergreen broad‐leaved forest on the island of Honshu, Japan. A phylogenetic linear regression model showed that dioecious species tended to mature at smaller sizes than did cosexual taxa. At the population level, given equal plant densities and reproductive efforts, the precocity of dioecious plants could serve as one of the factors that mitigate the limitations of pollen and seed‐shadow handicaps by increasing the density of reproductive individuals in the population. At the individual level, smaller size of onset of flowering may play a role in enhancing reproductive success over a lifetime by increasing reproductive opportunities. We discussed the possible effect of the relationship between precocity and some ecological traits of dioecious plants, such as small flowers pollinated by unspecialized insects, fleshy fruit dispersed by animals, and their preferential occurrence in the tropics and in island habitats. The universality of precocity among dioecious plants should be investigated in diverse plant communities. Such studies will increase our understanding of the evolution of plant breeding systems.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dioecious plants are more precocious than cosexual plants: A comparative study of relative sizes at the onset of sexual reproduction in woody species

Ohya

Nanami

Itoh

2017

Ecology and Evolution

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“…Nonetheless, a greater number of flowers might mean a reduction of, or no effect on, the visitation rate of each individual flower (Klinkhamer & Jong 1990;Mitchell et al 2004;Grindeland et al 2005). Likewise, a high density of flowering individuals in an area might lead to enhanced visitation for each due to facilitation (Kunin 1997;Thompson 2001;Moeller 2004;Makino & Sakai 2007;Brys & Jacquemyn 2010;Hegland 2014). Nonetheless, high densities of individuals that overlap in flowering, both in time and space, might cause competition for pollinators, leading to decreased visitation rates per individual (Mustajärvi et al 2001;Sargent & Ackerly 2008;Hegland 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Breeding system and pollination of Pleroma trichopodum DC. (Melastomataceae): a potential species for the restoration of Atlantic Forest in southern Brazil

2018

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Plant-pollinator interactions and their reproductive implications are of central importance to the organization of plant populations and communities in restoration areas. We studied the breeding system and flower visitors of Pleroma trichopodum, a pioneer species of the Atlantic Forest. We attempted to answer three questions: (1) Is P. trichopodum dependent on pollinators and mates for reproduction? (2) What are the pollinators of P. trichopodum? (3) Do tree flower-density and flowering-tree density of P. trichopodum enhance the visitation rate of focal trees and their flowers? We tested the breeding system through pollination treatments. We performed focal observations on 10 trees and analyzed the relationship between tree and flower visitation rates, and the tree flower-density and flowering-tree density with Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMM). Pleroma trichopodum sets fruits by selfing and outcrossing, both of which occur only through pollinator visits. Bees visited P. trichopodum, and their visitation increased with tree flower-density. Thus, individuals with greater floral displays may function as magnet species, enhancing the pollination of nearby plant species. This characteristic, allied with the ability to reproduce without a mate (selfing) and a tolerance of soggy soils, make P. trichopodum a candidate for Atlantic Forest restoration.

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“…Arbuscular-mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) form associations with the roots of most vascular plant species, consuming photosynthate and often providing enhanced nutrition or other benefits (Allen et al 1991). Because of the intimacy of the plant-AMF interaction, mycorrhizal suppression can have widespread direct and indirect effects on plant communities, including shifts in species diversity , altered competitive outcomes (Smith et al 1999), and increased growth of non-mycorrhizal or weakly mycorrhizal species (van der Heijden et al 1998). As mycorrhizae can affect both floral trait expression of individuals (Gange andSmith 2005, Wolfe et al 2005) and plant community composition , there is reason to expect mycorrhizae to influence plant-pollinator interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disruption of a Belowground Mutualism Alters Interactions Between Plants and Their Floral Visitors

Cahill

Elle

Smith

et al. 2008

Ecology

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Abstract. Plants engage in diverse and intimate interactions with unrelated taxa. For example, aboveground floral visitors provide pollination services, while belowground arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) enhance nutrient capture. Traditionally in ecology, these processes were studied in isolation, reinforcing the prevailing assumption that these above-and belowground processes were also functionally distinct. More recently, there has been a growing realization that the soil surface is not a barrier to many ecological interactions, particularly those involving plants (who live simultaneously above and below ground). Because of the potentially large impact that mycorrhizae and floral visitors can have on plant performance and community dynamics, we designed an experiment to test whether these multi-species mutualisms were interdependent under field conditions. Using benomyl, a widely used fungicide, we suppressed AMF in a native grassland, measuring plant, fungal, and floralvisitor responses after three years of fungal suppression. AMF suppression caused a shift in the community of floral visitors from large-bodied bees to small-bodied bees and flies, and reduced the total number of floral visits per flowering stem 67% across the 23 flowering species found in the plots. Fungal suppression has species-specific effects on floral visits for the six most common flowering plants in this experiment. Exploratory analyses suggest these results were due to changes in floral-visitor behavior due to altered patch-level floral display, rather than through direct effects of AMF suppression on floral morphology. Our findings indicate that AMF are an important, and overlooked, driver of floral-visitor community structure with the potential to affect pollination services. These results support the growing body of research indicating that interactions among ecological interactions can be of meaningful effect size under natural field conditions and may influence individual performance, population dynamics, and community structure.

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How do visitation patterns vary among pollinators in relation to floral display and floral design in a generalist pollination system?

Cited by 193 publications

References 58 publications

Dioecious plants are more precocious than cosexual plants: A comparative study of relative sizes at the onset of sexual reproduction in woody species

Dioecious plants are more precocious than cosexual plants: A comparative study of relative sizes at the onset of sexual reproduction in woody species

Breeding system and pollination of Pleroma trichopodum DC. (Melastomataceae): a potential species for the restoration of Atlantic Forest in southern Brazil

Disruption of a Belowground Mutualism Alters Interactions Between Plants and Their Floral Visitors

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