AOBPreview originally published online on March 20, 2009
Annals of Botany 2009 103(9):1403-1413; doi:10.1093/aob/mcp062
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appears in the following Annals of Botany issue: Special Issue: Plant-Pollinator Interactions [View the issue table of contents]
New frontiers in competition for pollination
1 Department of Biology, Program in Integrated Biosciences, University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325, USA
2 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA
3 Department of Biology, Nazareth College, Rochester, NY 14618, USA
4 Department of Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
5 School of Natural Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
* For correspondence: E-mail: rjm2{at}uakron.edu
Received: 31 October 2008 Returned for revision: 13 January 2009 Accepted: 6 February 2009 Published electronically: 20 March 2009
Background: Co-flowering plant species frequently share pollinators. Pollinator sharing is often detrimental to one or more of these species, leading to competition for pollination. Perhaps because it offers an intriguing juxtaposition of ecological opposites – mutualism and competition – within one relatively tractable system, competition for pollination has captured the interest of ecologists for over a century.
Scope: Our intent is to contemplate exciting areas for further work on competition for pollination, rather than to exhaustively review past studies. After a brief historical summary, we present a conceptual framework that incorporates many aspects of competition for pollination, involving both the quantity and quality of pollination services, and both female and male sex functions of flowers. Using this framework, we contemplate a relatively subtle mechanism of competition involving pollen loss, and consider how competition might affect plant mating systems, overall reproductive success and multi-species interactions. We next consider how competition for pollination might be altered by several emerging consequences of a changing planet, including the spread of alien species, climate change and pollinator declines. Most of these topics represent new frontiers whose exploration has just begun.
Conclusions: Competition for pollination has served as a model for the integration of ecological and evolutionary perspectives in the study of species interactions. Its study has elucidated both obvious and more subtle mechanisms, and has documented a range of outcomes. However, the potential for this interaction to inform our understanding of both pure and applied aspects of pollination biology has only begun to be realized.
Key words: Alien plants, climate change, competition for pollination, facilitation, mating system, mechanism, Lythrum, Mimulus, pollinator visitation, sexual function, invasive species, pollen loss
CiteULike 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us What's this?
Related articles in Ann Bot:
- ContentSnapshots
Ann Bot 2009 103: i.[Extract] [Full Text]
This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|
 |
|
  L. D. Harder and M. A. Aizen Floral adaptation and diversification under pollen limitation Phil Trans R Soc B, February 12, 2010; 365(1539): 529 - 543. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 R. J. Mitchell, R. E. Irwin, R. J. Flanagan, and J. D. Karron Ecology and evolution of plant-pollinator interactions Ann. Bot., June 1, 2009; 103(9): 1355 - 1363. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
|
|