Congruence between visitation and pollen-transport networks in a California plant-pollinator community
Congruence between visitation and pollen-transport networks in a California plant-pollinator community
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1600-0706.2009.17694.x
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发表时间：
2010-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Alarcon, Ruben
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Alarcon, Ruben
大多数最近描述授粉网络的研究都是基于观察到的访花行为，很少有人明确测试访花者是否真的携带花粉。由于花访客可以在他们的能力不同，以消除和转移花粉，这是很重要的是要表明，访问模式反映有效的授粉。由于在群落规模上测量每次访问花粉沉积的困难，第一步是检查昆虫访问者携带的同种花粉的量。在这里，我比较了植物-动物访问网络的花粉运输网络，估计从昆虫花粉负荷，从美国南部加州的山地草甸社区。在2001年和2002年，访问和花粉运输网络正相关。然而，不携带任何同种花粉的游客的排除表明，花粉运输网络更专业化，从植物的角度来看，物种参与较少的互惠互动相比，来自访问频率的估计。虽然同种花粉负荷较小，在2002年，蜜蜂往往进行最大的同种负荷在这两年，并负责运输最多的花粉。这些结果表明，虽然访问网络是合适的一阶近似的授粉网络，游客携带同种花粉的信息，以及在什么量，是至关重要的区分拮抗和互利的相互作用。
Most recent studies describing pollination networks are based on observed flower visits, and few have explicitly tested if the floral visitors actually carry pollen. Since floral visitors can vary in their ability to remove and transfer pollen, it is important to show that visitation patterns reflect effective pollination. Given the difficulty of measuring per-visit pollen deposition at the community scale, a first step is to examine the amount of conspecific pollen carried by insect visitors. Here I compared the plant-animal visitation network with the pollen-transport network, estimated from insect pollen loads, for a montane meadow community from southern California, USA. Visitation and pollen-transport networks were positively associated with each other in both 2001 and 2002. However, the exclusion of visitors that do not carry any conspecific pollen reveals that pollen-transport networks are more specialized from the plants' perspective and that species are involved in fewer mutualistic interactions compared with estimates derived from visitation frequencies. Although conspecific pollen loads were smaller in 2002, bees tended to carry the largest conspecific loads in both years and were responsible for transporting the most pollen. These results suggest that, although visitation networks are suitable first-order approximations of pollination networks, information on which visitors carry conspecific pollen, and in what amounts, is crucial for distinguishing between antagonistic and mutualistic interactions.