AOBPreview originally published online on April 29, 2009
Annals of Botany 2009 103(9):1395-1401; doi:10.1093/aob/mcp091
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This article appears in the following Annals of Botany issue: Special Issue: Plant-Pollinator Interactions [View the issue table of contents]
The birds and the bees: pollinator behaviour and variation in the mating system of the rare shrub Grevillea macleayana
1 University of Wollongong in Dubai, PO Box 20183 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
2 Institute for Conservation Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong, NSW 2522, Australia
3 SEQ/NSW Assessment Section, Approvals and Wildlife Division, Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts, GPO Box 787, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia
* For correspondence. E-mail robwhelan{at}uowdubai.ac.ae
Received: 31 October 2008 Returned for revision: 30 January 2009 Accepted: 31 March 2009 Published electronically: 29 April 2009
Background and Aims: In Australia, honey-bees have invaded systems that evolved without social insect pollinators, where many plants are adapted to vertebrate pollination. Behavioural differences between pollinators are likely to influence mating patterns, but few studies have examined this empirically in long-lived, woody, perennials. It was shown previously that outcrossing rates in Grevillea macleayana vary among populations. Here tests were conducted to determine whether the behaviour of birds and honey-bees differed between a population previously found to be highly outcrossed and two inbreeding populations.
Methods: Visit frequencies and movement patterns of the visitors to inflorescences at three sites over two seasons were compared. A caging experiment was used to test the effects of excluding birds on pollen removal from newly opened flowers and on pollen deposition on stigmas that had been washed clean.
Key Results: Honey-bees were the most frequent visitors overall, but honeyeaters were more frequent visitors in the population previously found to have a high outcrossing rate than they were in either of the other populations. More visits by honeyeaters were from distant plants. Pollen removal did not vary greatly among sites, and was not affected by bird exclusion; however, more pollen was deposited on the stigmas of cleaned pollen presenters in the population previously observed to be highly outcrossing than in the other two. This high level of pollen deposition was reduced by experimental bird exclusion.
Conclusions: Honey-bees were the most frequent visitors, by an order of magnitude, and excluding vertebrates revealed that bees were removing most of the pollen but deposited fewer pollen grains on stigmas. Birds were more frequent visitors at the site previously found to be outcrossing than the other two sites, and they moved further between plants and visited fewer inflorescences on a plant during a foraging bout than bees did. These characteristics of bird visits to G. macleayana would be sufficient to produce significant variation in outcrossing rates among sites.
Key words: Grevillea macleayana, Apis mellifera, honey-bees, honeyeaters, pollinator behaviour, pollen removal, pollen deposition, outcrossing rate
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