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Pollination Syndromes in Mediterranean Orchids—Implications for Speciation, Taxonomy and Conservation

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Abstract

The Mediterranean flora is spectacularly rich in orchid species that have evolved remarkable adaptations to their environment. Orchids have complex and delicate interactions with their pollinators, which makes them particularly prone to local extinction. Conservation actions should be encouraged for a range of endangered Mediterranean orchid species, but the current taxonomic confusion in several genera and the apparent disagreement among orchid taxonomists make the situation particularly confusing from a conservation perspective. In this review, we document how the different pollination syndromes of Mediterranean orchids (nectar reward, shelter offering, food deception and sexual deception) can have a profound impact on the type of reproductive barriers among species, on floral phenotypic variation as we perceive it, on potentially related processes of species sorting and extinction and, consequently, should have a strong influence on the related conservation management programs. We also highlight that the majority of Mediterranean orchids are pollinated by specialised bees often occupying otherwise narrow ecological niches (e.g. pollen specialisation, brood cell parasites, specific nesting site). This condition makes the orchid-pollinator interactions very fragile and several orchid species prone to local extinction. We illustrate this phenomenon by a selection of case studies that show how the adequate integration of the ecological requirements/traits of the orchids and their associated pollinators into conservation actions could help protect endangered species and ensure the sustainability of the often complex local pollination web.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Robert Pemberton, Stella Watts and Hong Liu for their critical reading of the paper and for their constructive comments. NJV thanks Yves Wilcox for providing the photograph of the red helleborine used in Fig. 1, and the FRS-FNRS (Belgium) for financial support via a post-doctoral grant.

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  1. Evolutionary Ecology & Biology, Free University of Brussels/Université Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue F.D. Roosevelt 50 CP 160/12, B-1050, Brussels, Belgium

    Nicolas J. Vereecken

  2. Institute of Systematic Botany, University of Zürich, Zollikerstrasse 107, CH-8008, Zürich, Switzerland

    Nicolas J. Vereecken

  3. Department of Evolutionary and Environmental Biology, Institute of Evolution, Haifa University, 31905, Haifa, Israel

    Amots Dafni

  4. Department of Structural and Functional Biology, University of Naples “Federico II”, Complesso Universitario Monte Sant’Angelo Via Cinthia, Ed. 7, I-80126, Naples, Italy

    Salvatore Cozzolino

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Correspondence to Nicolas J. Vereecken.

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Vereecken, N.J., Dafni, A. & Cozzolino, S. Pollination Syndromes in Mediterranean Orchids—Implications for Speciation, Taxonomy and Conservation. Bot. Rev. 76, 220–240 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12229-010-9049-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12229-010-9049-5

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