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Pollination generalization and reproductive assurance by selfing in a tropical montane ecosystem

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Abstract

Pollination and reproduction are important processes for understanding plant community dynamics. Information regarding pollination and reproduction is urgent for threatened ecosystems, such as tropical montane ecosystems. In tropical mountains, pollination patterns are expected to conform to the reproductive assurance theory (due to low pollinator activity) and old, climatically buffered and infertile landscapes (OCBIL) theory (due to restricted plant range size). For 82 plant species of the Itatiaia National Park (including endemic and endangered species), we evaluated at least one of the following features: pollinator identity, flower color and size, flowering phenology, and pollinator dependence. Most plant species (ca. 60%) were pollinated by two or more functional groups of pollinators (generalized pollination), with high importance of flies as pollinators. There was low pollinator activity overall (less than one visit per flower per hour). Notably, the invasive honeybee Apis mellifera L. performed half of the visits to this entire plant community, suggesting an impact on the native pollinator fauna and consequently on the native flora. Most endemic plants were generalized with white and small flowers, while endangered species were pollination-specialized with colorful and large flowers. Thus, endangered species are susceptible to changes in pollinator fauna. Flowering seasonality reflected the importance of climatic constraints in this environment. One-third of the plant species were autogamous. Our data suggest that pollinator scarcity may have promoted reproductive assurance strategies such as generalization and pollinator independence. Our community-level study highlighted consistent pollination patterns for tropical mountains and emphasized threats for specialized endangered species.

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Data availability

Part of the data used here is already available in Bergamo et al. (2020a, 2020b). The data is available in the following https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.16777729.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Suzana Costa, Nicoll Escobar, Pamela Medina, Amanda Mesquita, and Pamela Santana and for help in the field. We thank Juliana Amaral, Lucas Bacci, João Carmo, Julie Dutilh, Marcelo Egea, Camila Inácio, Leonardo Meireles, André Scatigna, João Semir, and Gustavo Shimizu for plant identification. We thank Marina Moreira for help with gathering endemism and conservation status data.

Funding

PJB was funded by FAPESP during the data collection (Process nº 2016/06434–0). MS (grant 302781/2016–1) and MW (436335/2018–2) received financial support and NSS (157687/2019–8) received scholarships from CNPq. This study was financed in part by CAPES (Finance code 001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Pesquisas Jardim Botânico Do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Pedro Joaquim Bergamo

  2. Programa de Pós-Graduação Em Biologia Vegetal, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

    Nathália Susin Streher & Vivian Zambon

  3. Instituto de Ciências da Natureza, Universidade Federal de Alfenas, Alfenas, Minas Gerais, Brazil

    Marina Wolowski

  4. Departamento de Biologia Vegetal, Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil

    Marlies Sazima

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  1. Pedro Joaquim Bergamo
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  2. Nathália Susin Streher
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  3. Vivian Zambon
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  4. Marina Wolowski
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  5. Marlies Sazima
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Contributions

PJB, NSS, and VZ collected data. PJB analyzed data. PJB, NSS, MW, and MS conceived the study. PJB wrote the first draft and all authors contributed to the last version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Pedro Joaquim Bergamo.

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Bergamo, P.J., Streher, N.S., Zambon, V. et al. Pollination generalization and reproductive assurance by selfing in a tropical montane ecosystem. Sci Nat 108, 50 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-021-01764-8

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