Dataset Information

What Do Nectarivorous Bats Like? Nectar Composition in Bromeliaceae With Special Emphasis on Bat-Pollinated Species.

ABSTRACT: Floral nectar is the most important reward for pollinators and an integral component of the pollination syndrome. Nectar research has mainly focused on sugars or amino acids, whereas more comprehensive studies on the nectar composition of closely related plant species with different pollination types are rather limited. Nectar composition as well as concentrations of sugars, amino acids, inorganic ions, and organic acids were analyzed for 147 species of Bromeliaceae. This plant family shows a high diversity in terms of floral morphology, flowering time, and predominant pollination types (trochilophilous, trochilophilous/entomophilous, psychophilous, sphingophilous, chiropterophilous). Based on the analyses, we examined the relationship between nectar traits and pollination type in this family. Nectar of all analyzed species contained high amounts of sugars with different proportions of glucose, fructose, and sucrose. The total concentrations of amino acids, inorganic cations, and anions, or organic acids were much lower. The analyses revealed that the sugar composition, the concentrations of inorganic cations and anions as well as the concentration of malate in nectar of bat-pollinated species differed significantly from nectar of species with other pollination types. Flowers of bat-pollinated species contained a higher volume of nectar, which results in a total of about 25-fold higher amounts of sugar in bat-pollinated species than in insect-pollinated species. This difference was even higher for amino acids, inorganic anions and cations, and organic acids (between 50 and 100-fold). In general, bat-pollinated plant species invest large amounts of organic and inorganic compounds for their pollinators. Furthermore, statistical analyses reveal that the characteristics of nectar in Bromeliaceae are more strongly determined by the pollinator type rather than by taxonomic groups or phylogenetic relations. However, a considerable part of the variance cannot be explained by either of the variables, which means that additional factors must be responsible for the differences in the nectar composition.

SUBMITTER: Gottlinger T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6393375 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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What Do Nectarivorous Bats Like? Nectar Composition in Bromeliaceae With Special Emphasis on Bat-Pollinated Species.

Göttlinger Thomas T Schwerdtfeger Michael M Tiedge Kira K Lohaus Gertrud G

Frontiers in plant science 20190221

Floral nectar is the most important reward for pollinators and an integral component of the pollination syndrome. Nectar research has mainly focused on sugars or amino acids, whereas more comprehensive studies on the nectar composition of closely related plant species with different pollination types are rather limited. Nectar composition as well as concentrations of sugars, amino acids, inorganic ions, and organic acids were analyzed for 147 species of Bromeliaceae. This plant family shows a hi ...[more]

PMID: 30847001

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Project description:BACKGROUND:New World leaf-nosed bats, Phyllostomidae, represent a lineage of Chiroptera marked by unprecedented morphological/ecological diversity and extensive intergeneric chromosomal reorganization. There are still disagreements regarding their systematic relationships due to morphological convergence among some groups. Their history of karyotypic evolution also remains to be documented. RESULTS:To better understand the evolutionary relationships within Phyllostomidae, we developed chromosome paints from the bat species Macrotus californicus. We tested the potential of these paints as phylogenetic tools by looking for chromosomal signatures in two lineages of nectarivorous phyllostomids whose independent origins have been statistically supported by molecular phylogenies. By examining the chromosomal homologies defined by chromosome painting among two representatives of the subfamily Glossophaginae (Glossophaga soricina and Anoura cultrata) and one species from the subfamily Lonchophyllinae (Lonchophylla concava), we found chromosomal correspondence in regions not previously detected by other comparative cytogenetic techniques. We proposed the corresponding human chromosomal segments for chromosomes of the investigated species and found two syntenic associations shared by G. soricina and A. cultrata. CONCLUSION:Comparative painting with whole chromosome-specific paints of M. californicus demonstrates an extensive chromosomal reorganization within the two lineages of nectarivorous phyllostomids, with a large number of chromosomes shared between M. californicus and G. soricina. We show that the evolution of nectar-feeding bats occurs mainly by reshuffling of chiropteran Evolutionarily Conserved Units (ECUs). Robertsonian fusions/fissions and inversions seem to be important modifiers of phyllostomid karyotypes, and autapomorphic character states are common within species. Macrotus californicus chromosome paints will be a valuable tool for documenting the pattern of karyotypic evolution within Phyllostomidae radiation.

Project description:Animals should maximize their energy uptake while reducing the costs for foraging. For flower-visitors these costs and benefits are rather straight forward as the energy uptake equals the caloric content of the consumed nectar while the costs equal the handling time at the flower. Due to their energetically demanding lifestyle, flower-visiting bats face particularly harsh energetic conditions and thus need to optimize their foraging behavior at the flowers of the different plant species they encounter within their habitat. In flight cage experiments we examined the nectar-drinking behavior (i.e. hovering duration, nectar uptake, and the resulting feeding efficiency) of the specialized nectar-feeding bat Hylonycteris underwoodi and the more generalistic Glossophaga commissarisi at flowers of two plant species that constitute important nectar resources in the Caribbean lowland rainforests of Costa Rica and compared nectar-drinking behavior between both bat species and at both plant species. We hypothesized that the 1) specialized bat should outperform the more generalistic species and that 2) bats should generally perform better at flowers of the nectar-rich flowers of the bromeliad Werauhia gladioliflora than at the relatively nectar-poor flowers of the Solanaceae Merinthopodium neuranthum that has an extremely long flowering phase and therefore is an extremely reliable nectar resource, particularly for the specialized Hylonycteris. While we did not find substantial differences in the feeding efficiency of the generalist G. commissarisi, we observed an increased feeding efficiency of the specialized H. underwoodi at flowers of the nectar-poor M. neuranthum. This suggests that familiarity and ecological importance are more important determinants of the interaction than just morphological traits. Our results demonstrate that in addition to morphology, behavioral adaptations are also important drivers that determine the fitness of nectar-feeding bats. Both familiarity with and the ecological importance of a resource seem to contribute to shaping the interactions between pollinating bats and their plants.

Dataset Information

What Do Nectarivorous Bats Like? Nectar Composition in Bromeliaceae With Special Emphasis on Bat-Pollinated Species.

Publications

What Do Nectarivorous Bats Like? Nectar Composition in Bromeliaceae With Special Emphasis on Bat-Pollinated Species.

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