AOBPreview published online on February 14, 2009
Annals of Botany, doi:10.1093/aob/mcp031
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A global test of the pollination syndrome hypothesis
1 Landscape and Biodiversity Research Group, School of Applied Sciences, University of Northampton, Park Campus, Northampton NN2 7AL, UK
2 Department of Biology, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA
3 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Center for Insect Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
4 School of Natural Resources, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
5 School of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Tasmania, Private Bag 78, Hobart, Tasmania, 7001, Australia
6 Department of Botany, Rhodes University, PO Box 94, Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa
7 Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, PO Box 519, Crested Butte, CO 81224, USA
* For correspondence. E-mail jeff.ollerton{at}northampton.ac.uk
Received: 29 October 2008 Returned for revision: 20 November 2008 Accepted: 7 January 2009
Background and Aims: ‘Pollination syndromes’ are suites of phenotypic traits hypothesized to reflect convergent adaptations of flowers for pollination by specific types of animals. They were first developed in the 1870s and honed during the mid 20th Century. In spite of this long history and their central role in organizing research on plant–pollinator interactions, the pollination syndromes have rarely been subjected to test. The syndromes were tested here by asking whether they successfully capture patterns of covariance of floral traits and predict the most common pollinators of flowers.
Methods: Flowers in six communities from three continents were scored for expression of floral traits used in published descriptions of the pollination syndromes, and simultaneously the pollinators of as many species as possible were characterized.
Key Results: Ordination of flowers in a multivariate ‘phenotype space’ defined by the syndromes showed that almost no plant species fall within the discrete syndrome clusters. Furthermore, in approximately two-thirds of plant species, the most common pollinator could not be successfully predicted by assuming that each plant species belongs to the syndrome closest to it in phenotype space.
Conclusions: The pollination syndrome hypothesis as usually articulated does not successfully describe the diversity of floral phenotypes or predict the pollinators of most plant species. Caution is suggested when using pollination syndromes for organizing floral diversity, or for inferring agents of floral adaptation. A fresh look at how traits of flowers and pollinators relate to visitation and pollen transfer is recommended, in order to determine whether axes can be identified that describe floral functional diversity more successfully than the traditional syndromes.
Key words: Convergent evolution, floral traits, global, montane meadow, multidimensional scaling, mutualism, phenotype space, pollination syndromes, temperate grassland, test, tropical forest, tropical mountains
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