AOBPreview originally published online on January 8, 2009
Annals of Botany 2009 103(9):1481-1487; doi:10.1093/aob/mcn260
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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]
A generalized pollination system in the tropics: bats, birds and Aphelandra acanthus
1 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G5, Canada
2 Departamento de Biología, Universidad Central, Quito, Ecuador
* For correspondence. E-mail: n_muchhala{at}yahoo.com
Received: 14 September 2008 Returned for revision: 20 October 2008 Accepted: 20 November 2008 Published electronically: 8 January 2009
Background and Aims: A number of different types of flower-visiting animals coexist in any given habitat. What evolutionary and ecological factors influence the subset of these that a given plant relies on for its pollination? Addressing this question requires a mechanistic understanding of the importance of different potential pollinators in terms of visitation rate (pollinator ‘quantity’) and effectiveness at transferring pollen (pollinator ‘quality’) is required. While bat-pollinated plants typically are highly specialized to bats, there are some instances of bat-pollinated plants that use other pollinators as well. These generalized exceptions tend to occur in habitats where bat ‘quantity’ is poor due to low or fluctuating bat densities.
Methods: Aphelandra acanthus occurs in tropical cloud forests with relatively high densities of bat visitors, yet displays a mix of floral syndrome characteristics, suggesting adaptation to multiple types of pollinators. To understand its pollination system better, aspects of its floral phenology and the ‘quantity’ and ‘quality’ components of pollination by its floral visitors are studied here.
Key Results: Flowers were found to open and senesce throughout the day and night, although anther dehiscence was restricted to the late afternoon and night. Videotaping reveals that flowers are visited nocturnally by bats and moths, and diurnally by hummingbirds. Analysis of pollen deposition shows that bats regularly transfer large amounts of conspecific pollen, while hummingbirds occasionally transfer some pollen, and moths rarely do so.
Conclusions: Hummingbirds and bats were comparable in terms of pollination ‘quantity’, while bats were the most effective in terms of ‘quality’. Considering these components together, bats are responsible for approx. 70 % of A. acanthus pollination. However, bats also transferred remarkably large amounts of foreign pollen along with the conspecific grains (three of four grains were foreign). It is suggested that the negative effects of interspecific pollen transfer may decrease bat ‘quality’ for A. acanthus, and thus select for generalization on multiple pollinators instead of specialization on bats.
Key words: Specialization, generalization, pollinator effectiveness, hummingbirds, floral syndrome, bat pollination, chiropterophily, ornithophily, cloud forest, heterospecific pollen transfer
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