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AOBPreview originally published online on July 17, 2009
Annals of Botany 2009 104(5):845-851; doi:10.1093/aob/mcp173
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Annals of Botany Company. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Effective pollinators of Asian sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera): contemporary pollinators may not reflect the historical pollination syndrome

Jiao-Kun Li and Shuang-Quan Huang*

College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

* For correspondence. E-mail sqhuang{at}whu.edu.cn

Received: 28 March 2009    Returned for revision: 7 May 2009    Accepted: 3 June 2009    Published electronically: 17 July 2009

Background and Aims: If stabilizing selection by pollinators is a prerequisite for pollinator-mediated floral evolution, spatiotemporal variation in the pollinator assemblage may confuse the plant–pollinator interaction in a given species. Here, effective pollinators in a living fossil plant Nelumbo nucifera (Nelumbonaceae) were examined to test whether beetles are major pollinators as predicted by its pollination syndrome.

Methods: Pollinators of N. nucifera were investigated in 11 wild populations and one cultivated population, and pollination experiments were conducted to examine the pollinating role of two major pollinators (bees and beetles) in three populations.

Key Results: Lotus flowers are protogynous, bowl shaped and without nectar. The fragrant flowers can be self-heating during anthesis and produce around 1 million pollen grains per flower. It was found that bees and flies were the most frequent flower visitors in wild populations, contributing on average 87·9 and 49·4 % of seed set in Mishan and Lantian, respectively. Beetles were only found in one wild population and in the cultivated population, but the pollinator exclusion experiments showed that beetles were effective pollinators of Asian sacred lotus.

Conclusions: This study indicated that in their pollinating role, beetles, probable pollinators for this thermoregulating plant, had been replaced by some generalist insects in the wild. This finding implies that contemporary pollinators may not reflect the pollination syndrome.

Key words: Nelumbo nucifera, beetle pollinated, pollination syndrome, effective pollinator, generalized flower, thermoregulation, Nelumbonaceae


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