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Low functional diversity promotes niche changes in natural island pollinator communities.

ABSTRACT: Functional diversity loss among pollinators has rapidly progressed across the globe and is expected to influence plant-pollinator interactions in natural communities. Although recent findings suggest that the disappearance of a certain pollinator functional group may cause niche expansions and/or shifts in other groups, no study has examined this prediction in natural communities with high plant and pollinator diversities. By comparing coastal pollination networks on continental and oceanic islands, we examined how community-level flower visit patterns are influenced by the relative biomass of long-tongued pollinators (RBLP). We found that RBLP significantly correlated with pollinator functional diversity and was lower in oceanic than in continental islands. Pollinator niches shifted with decreasing RBLP, such that diverse species with various proboscis lengths, especially short-tongued species, increasingly visited long-tubed flowers. However, we found no conspicuous negative impacts of low RBLP and the consequent niche shifts on pollinator visit frequencies to flowers in oceanic island communities. Notably, fruit set significantly decreased as RBLP decreased in a study plant species. These results suggest that niche shifts by other functional groups can generally compensate for a decline in long-tongued pollinators in natural communities, but there may be negative impacts on plant reproduction.

SUBMITTER: Hiraiwa MK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5247496 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Low functional diversity promotes niche changes in natural island pollinator communities.

Hiraiwa Masayoshi K MK Ushimaru Atushi A

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20170101 1846

Functional diversity loss among pollinators has rapidly progressed across the globe and is expected to influence plant-pollinator interactions in natural communities. Although recent findings suggest that the disappearance of a certain pollinator functional group may cause niche expansions and/or shifts in other groups, no study has examined this prediction in natural communities with high plant and pollinator diversities. By comparing coastal pollination networks on continental and oceanic isla ...[more]

PMID: 28077773

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Project description:Exploring vegetation distribution spatial patterns facilitates understanding how biodiversity addresses the potential threat of future climate variability, especially for highly diverse and threatened tropical plant communities, but few empirical studies have been performed. Dacrydium pectinatum is a constructive and endangered species in the tropical mountain forests of Hainan Island, China. In this study, sixty-eight 30 m × 30 m permanent plots of D. pectinatum were investigated, and species-based and phylogenetic-based methods were used to analyze the α- and β-diversity pattern variation and its key drivers. Our study showed that species and phylogenetic α-diversity patterns are different on a local scale. However, on a regional scale, the variations in the two α-diversity patterns tend to converge, and they decrease with increasing elevation. The phylogenetic structure changes from overdispersion to convergence with increasing elevation. Soil (SOM, TP, AP), topography (EL, SL), and stand (CD) factors and α-diversity showed close correlations. Species and phylogenetic β-diversity have significant positive correlations with changing environmental distance and geographical distance; however, as a representative form of habitat heterogeneity, elevation distance has a greater impact on β-diversity changes than geographical distance. In conclusion, the α- and β-diversity patterns of the D. pectinatum community are mainly related to habitat filtering, especially in high-elevation areas, and the colonization history of various regions also affects the formation of diversity patterns. Species-based and phylogenetic-based methods robustly demonstrated the key role of the habitat filtering hypothesis in community assembly. We believe that more plant diversity patterns need to be explored to understand the biodiversity formation mechanisms in tropical forests. We also recommend strengthening the construction and management of nature reserves to help address the biodiversity loss crisis in endangered tropical plant communities.

Dataset Information

Low functional diversity promotes niche changes in natural island pollinator communities.

Publications

Low functional diversity promotes niche changes in natural island pollinator communities.

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