The Hummingbird Plant Community of a Tropical Montane Rain Forest in Southern Ecuador

Abstract

The diversity of a hummingbird plant community in the eastern Andes of southern Ecuador was studied on the equivalent of a hectare (two 500 ′ 10 m transects) at 1920 ‐ 2100 m a.s.l. over the course of a year. A total of 3186 flowering individuals, representing 12 plant families, 29 genera and 72 species, were found to be visited by hummingbirds. Bromeliaceae had the most species visited, followed by Orchidaceae and Ericaceae. The majority of visited plant species were represented by a very few individuals, and only a few species of the Bromeliaceae and Orchidaceae appeared in large numbers of visited individuals. With regard to life forms visited by hummingbirds, epiphytes predominated (59 %), followed by trees and shrubs (29 %), vines (8 %) and herbs (4 %). Visited flowers usually had short‐ to medium‐long floral tubes which were either functionally or morphologically tubiform or campanulate. Fifty percent of the species had red‐coloured flowers, and a considerable number of the blossoms (43 %) displayed contrasting colours. The 72 plant species received visits from 26 species of Trochilidae (hummingbirds) and two species of Coerebidae (honeycreepers). A mere eight species of hummingbirds were seen frequently at the study area; the remaining species were only occasionally sighted. The eight frequently sighted species of hummingbirds made use of a total of 74 % of all hummingbird‐visited plant species growing in the study area.

Polinização por beija-flores em uma área de caatinga no Município de Floresta, Pernambuco, Nordeste do Brasil

“…foi menor que aquele encontrado em remanescentes de Mata Atlântica , 1996, Buzato et al 2000, Lopes 2002) e em outras áreas neotropicais (Snow & Snow 1972, 1980, Dziedzioch et al 2003, onde este número variou de 22 a 72 espécies. De modo geral, a diversidade de espécies vegetais em florestas secas é, de fato, menor quando comparada a florestas úmidas (Gentry 1995).…”

“…O fato de Cactaceae ter sido a família com maior número de espécies ornitófilas (37,5%) pode decorrer da associação de fatores como sua grande representatividade em florestas secas (Gentry 1995, Griz & Machado 2001, Machado & Lopes 2003) e da ornitofilia ser bastante comum no grupo (Machado & Lopes 2004). Bromeliaceae, a segunda família mais representativa em número de espécies ornitófilas no presente estudo (25%), é citada por diversos autores como sendo responsável pelo maior percentual de espécies ornitófilas em diferentes comunidades vegetacionais como a mata atlântica (Snow & Snow 1986, 1996, Buzato et al 2000, Lopes 2002), florestas serranas (ou brejos de altitude) (Siqueira Filho & Machado 2004), florestas andinas (Dziedzioch et al 2003) e caatinga (Santos 2005).…”

“…Porém, epífitas e lianas foram mais freqüentes entre as espécies ornitófilas em vários outros estudos enfocando comunidades florestais tanto úmidas (Snow & Snow 1986, Sazima et al 1996, Buzato et al 2000, Dziedzioch et al 2003, quanto semideciduais (Arizmendi & Ornelas 1990, Lopes 2002. Uma vez que o conjunto de estudos referidos acima inclui florestas úmidas e semideciduais, além de campos rupestres e caatinga, parece não haver associação entre hábito predominante em espécies ornitófilas e tipo vegetacional.…”

Adaptive radiation, correlated and contingent evolution, and net species diversification in Bromeliaceae

“…For the few cases in which no d 13 C value was available for a species, but all congeners studied have the same photosynthetic pathway, we coded remaining species as having that pathway. Data on pollination syndromes (avian, bat, insect) were drawn from Vogel (1954Vogel ( , 1969, Smith and Down (1974, 1977, 1979, Gardner (1986), Sazima et al (1989Sazima et al ( , 1995aSazima et al ( , 1995bSazima et al ( , 1996Sazima et al ( , 1999, Galetto and Bernardello (1992), Till (1992), Till (1998), Benzing (2000), Kessler and Krömer (2000), Dziedzioch et al (2003), Canela and Sazima (2005), Krömer et al (2005Krömer et al ( , 2006Krömer et al ( , 2008, and Tschapka and von Helversen (2007). For species lacking direct observations of pollinators, pollination syndromes were deduced from floral traits such as corolla color, size, and shape, position of the anthers, and presence/absence of landing platforms (Vogel, 1954;Baker and Baker, 1990).…”

Epiphytic bryophytes and habitat variation in montane rainforest, Peru

“…The predominance of wind-dispersed diaspores in the epiphyte environment is common throughout the world, especially in the upper canopy (Kelly, 1985;Pittendrigh, 1948). The tubular flowers and berry fruits of the Ericaceae are adapted to hummingbird polination (Dziedzioch et al, 2003;Snow and Snow, 1980).…”