Plant-Pollinator Relationships at Two Altitudes in the Andes of Mendoza, Argentina

Medán, Diego; Montaldo, Norberto H.; Devoto, Mariano; Mantese, Anita I.; Vasellati, Viviana; Roitman, Germán; Bartoloni, Norberto

doi:10.2307/1552480

Cited by 63 publications

(50 citation statements)

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“…The positive relationship between pollinator richness and plant population size has been found in other studies (Conner and Neumeier 1995;Kunin 1997), and it is expected as a consequence of the species richnessarea relationship. Interestingly, and in contrast to many studies that have shown a decrease in pollinator richness with altitude (Arroyo et al 1982;Medan et al 2002;Devoto et al 2005;Hodkinson 2005), we found no effect of altitude on pollinator richness or diversity.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Pollinator diversity affects plant reproduction and recruitment: the tradeoffs of generalization

et al. 2007

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One outstanding and unsolved challenge in ecology and conservation biology is to understand how pollinator diversity affects plant performance. Here, we provide evidence of the functional role of pollination diversity in a plant species, Erysimum mediohispanicum (Brassicaceae). Pollinator abundance, richness and diversity as well as plant reproduction and recruitment were determined in eight plant populations. We found that E. mediohispanicum was generalized both at the regional and local (population) scale, since its flowers were visited by more than 100 species of insects with very different morphology, size and behaviour. However, populations differed in the degree of generalization. Generalization correlated with pollinator abundance and plant population size, but not with habitat, ungulate damage intensity, altitude or spatial location. More importantly, the degree of generalization had significant consequences for plant reproduction and recruitment. Plants from populations with intermediate generalization produced more seeds than plants from populations with low or high degrees of generalization. These differences were not the result of differences in number of flowers produced per plant. In addition, seedling emergence in a common garden was highest in plants from populations with intermediate degree of generalization. This outcome suggests the existence of an optimal level of generalizations even for generalized plant species.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 99%

Pollinator diversity affects plant reproduction and recruitment: the tradeoffs of generalization

et al. 2007

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“…Furthermore, since reproductive output was similar between both wallflowers, overall pollination efficiency seems to be independent on the type of insects visiting the flowers. Pollinators are limiting in most high mountain environments due to their scarcity, their temporal asynchrony with flowering period, or their low efficiency (Arroyo et al, 1985(Arroyo et al, , 2006Devoto et al, 2005;Gómez and Zamora, 1999;Hodkinson, 2005;Medan et al, 2002;Warren et al, 1988). In our study, we believe that the main reason causing the low reproductive output of the studied plants is the low efficiency of the main flower visitors, ants and beetles.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Pollinators are limiting in most high mountain environments, either for their scarcity or for their temporal asynchrony with flowering period (Arroyo et al, 1985(Arroyo et al, , 2006Warren et al, 1988). In addition, the pollination rate and average efficiency also decreases altitudinally as a consequence of the turnover in the pollinator fauna with altitude (Devoto et al, 2005;Gómez and Zamora, 1999;Hodkinson, 2005;Medan et al, 2002). In general, bees and beeflies are replaced in alpine environments by low energy-demanding and low-efficient pollinators, like flies, beetles and ants (Gómez and Zamora, 1999;Lien and Yuan, 2004;Pyrcz and Wojtusiak, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differences in the diversity and composition of the pollinator assemblage of two co-flowering congeneric alpine wallflowers, Erysimum nevadense and E. baeticum

Ortigosa

Gómez

2010

Flora - Morphology, Distribution, Functional Ecology of Plants

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“…In traditional studies the interaction of all active plant and animal species is recorded within a restricted geographical extension (Medan et al, 2002;Memmott et al, 2004). A standard graphical description of these systems can be made through bipartite networks in which nodes (species) are linked (interact) only with nodes of the opposite guild (plants with animals and vice versa) (Albert and Barabási, 2002).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analysis and assembling of network structure in mutualistic systems

Medán

Perazzo

Devoto

et al. 2007

Journal of Theoretical Biology

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It has been observed that mutualistic bipartite networks have a nested structure of interactions. In addition, the degree distributions associated with the two guilds involved in such networks (e.g. plants & pollinators or plants & seed dispersers) approximately follow a truncated power law. We show that nestedness and truncated power law distributions are intimately linked, and that any biological reasons for such truncation are superimposed to finite size effects . We further explore the internal organization of bipartite networks by developing a self-organizing network model (SNM) that reproduces empirical observations of pollination systems of widely different sizes. Since the only inputs to the SNM are numbers of plant and animal species, and their interactions (i.e., no data on local abundance of the interacting species are needed), we suggest that the well-known association between species frequency of interaction and species degree is a consequence rather than a cause, of the observed network structure.

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Plant-Pollinator Relationships at Two Altitudes in the Andes of Mendoza, Argentina

Cited by 63 publications

References 0 publications

Pollinator diversity affects plant reproduction and recruitment: the tradeoffs of generalization

Pollinator diversity affects plant reproduction and recruitment: the tradeoffs of generalization

Differences in the diversity and composition of the pollinator assemblage of two co-flowering congeneric alpine wallflowers, Erysimum nevadense and E. baeticum

Analysis and assembling of network structure in mutualistic systems

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