Are pollination syndromes useful predictors of floral visitors in Tasmania
By Andrew B. Hingston, P. McQuillan. 2000
137 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Diurnal visitors to the flowers of many native plant species were identified in a wide range of Tasmanian sclerophyllous vegetation between September 1996 and April 1997. These foraging profiles were analysed to determine whether they were characteristic of various floral morphologies in predictable ways. It was found that although visitor profiles were sometimes consistent with classic pollination syndromes, these syndromes were unreliable predictors of floral visitors. Very few flowers were exclusively bird-pollinated, and none were strictly fly-, beetle-, wasp-, or butterfly-pollinated. The majority of flowering plants were unspecialized in their morphology, and consequently hosted a diverse array of visitors. In addition, visitor profiles to congeners with similar floral morphologies, and even to conspecifics, differed between habitats. Altitude was a major factor in determining visitors, with flies being the most abundant visitors above 700 m. However, congeners in several genera of Epacridaceae, as well as the genus Correa, which differed in floral morphology also differed in visitor profiles. Tubular flowers were associated with birds, while flowers with more accessible nectar were visited by insects. The only taxa exhibiting a bee-pollination syndrome that were largely visited by bees were the Fabaceae and Goodenia ovata Sm. Several species with purple or pink flowers were also predominantly visited by bees, but did not strictly conform to the melittophilous syndrome. In contrast, other flowers exhibiting an ostensibly mellitophilous syndrome hosted very few bees. Of these, species that occurred at high altitude were mainly visited by flies, while others received very few potential pollen vectors.
Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Plant Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/539655726067832e315b7fd737ee5dde3a52ed88
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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
In Plant Science
Citations in the corpus
- A multivariate search for pollination syndromes among penstemons (2004, background): “Admittedly, the majority of animal-pollinated flowers fall into a generalized entomophilous ‘‘syndrome’’ involving many bees, flies, beetles, and Lepidoptera (Hingston and McQuillan 2000).”
- Invasive mutualisms and the structure of plant–pollinator interactions in the temperate forests of north‐west Patagonia, Argentina (2006, background): “These may relate directly to pollinator abundance and determine the high temporal and spatial variation of most pollinator assemblages (Herrera 1988, 1995; Hingston & McQuillan 1999, 2000; Aizen 2001; Hambäck 2001; Potts et al .”
- Mutualisms with the wreckage of an avifauna: the status of bird pollination and fruit- dispersal in New Zealand (2010, unknown): “…in the Myrtaceae are traditionally assigned as bird or insect-adapted according to colour (red or white respectively), but work in Australia shows birds frequently go to the white blossoms (Ford et al. 1979; Hingston & McQuillan 2000), so we include these flowers in the generalist category.”
- Progress in understanding pollination systems in New Zealand (2005, background): “Similar floras, such as in Tasmania, also have bird-visited plant species associated with tubular flowers (Hingston & McQuillan 2000).”