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Temporal stability of pollinator preference in an alpine plant community and its implications for the evolution of floral traits

Oecologia volume 166, pages 671–680 (2011)Cite this article

Abstract

A traditional view of diverse floral traits is that they reflect differences in foraging preferences of pollinators. The role of pollinators in the evolution of floral traits has been questioned recently by broad community surveys, especially studies concerning variation in pollinator assemblages and visitation frequency, which suggest a diminished role of pollinators in floral evolution. Here, we investigate the relationships between six categories of floral traits of 29 species and 10 pollinator functional groups in an alpine meadow in the Hengduan Mountains of China, over three consecutive years. Simpson’s diversity index was used to estimate the level of pollinator generalization of each plant species by considering both pollinator groups and their relative visitation frequencies. Multivariate analyses indicated that eight of the ten pollinator groups showed constant preferences for at least two floral traits, leading to a relatively stable level of ecological generalization for most floral traits (two out of three categories), despite the fact that the level of generalization of the entire community varied across years. Shape preferences of butterflies, honeybees and beeflies varied such that open flowers exhibited a lower level of ecological generalization in 2007 than closed flowers, in contrast with the other 2 years. These results suggest that temporally stabilized preferences of diverse pollinators may contribute to the evolution of specialized versus generalized floral traits; however, their role may be moderated by variation in community structure, including both the composition and abundance of plants and pollinators.

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Acknowledgments

We thank laboratory members Ji-Fan Sun, Xiao-Xin Tang, Yang Lu, Yun-Yun Mao, Chang-Qiu Liu, Qiang Fang, Cai Wei, and Huan-Le Liu for their help in the field study, Zhen-Dong Fang, Qin Xu, Zong-Ling Ma and Zi-Quan Pu from Shangri-La Alpine Botanical Garden for their logistical support, Lawrence D. Harder and Charles B. Fenster for comments on experimental design, Marti J. Anderson and Zhi-Gang Zhao for help in data analysis, and Sarah Corbet, Deren Eaton, Jeffrey Karron and three anonymous reviewers providing valuable comments on the manuscript. The experiments comply with the current laws and policy of biodiversity conservation in China. Grants from National Science Foundation of China (30770135 and 31030016) to S.Q.H. supported this work.

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

    Yan-Bing Gong & Shuang-Quan Huang

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  1. Yan-Bing Gong
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  2. Shuang-Quan Huang
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Correspondence to Shuang-Quan Huang.

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Communicated by Jeff Karron.

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Gong, YB., Huang, SQ. Temporal stability of pollinator preference in an alpine plant community and its implications for the evolution of floral traits. Oecologia 166, 671–680 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-011-1910-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-011-1910-7

Keywords

  • Floral traits
  • Temporal variation
  • Ecological generalization level
  • Generalization and specialization
  • Visitation frequency