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Generalist birds outperform specialist sunbirds as pollinators of an African Aloe.

ABSTRACT: Bird pollination systems are dominated by specialist nectarivores, such as hummingbirds in the Americas and sunbirds in Africa. Opportunistic (generalist) avian nectarivores such as orioles, weavers and bulbuls have also been implicated as plant pollinators, but their effectiveness as agents of pollen transfer is poorly known. Here, we compare the single-visit effectiveness of specialist and opportunistic avian nectarivores as pollinators of Aloe ferox, a plant that relies almost exclusively on birds for seed production. We found that the number of pollen grains on stigmas of flowers receiving single visits by opportunistic avian nectarivores was approximately threefold greater than on those receiving single visits by specialist sunbirds and about twofold greater than on those that received single visits by honeybees. The number of pollen grains on stigmas of flowers visited by sunbirds was similar to that on stigmas of unvisited flowers. These results show that opportunistic birds are highly effective pollinators of A. ferox, supporting the idea that some plants are specialized for pollination by opportunistic birds.

SUBMITTER: Diller C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6684984 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Generalist birds outperform specialist sunbirds as pollinators of an African Aloe.

Diller Carolina C Castañeda-Zárate Miguel M Johnson Steven D SD

Biology letters 20190731 7

Bird pollination systems are dominated by specialist nectarivores, such as hummingbirds in the Americas and sunbirds in Africa. Opportunistic (generalist) avian nectarivores such as orioles, weavers and bulbuls have also been implicated as plant pollinators, but their effectiveness as agents of pollen transfer is poorly known. Here, we compare the single-visit effectiveness of specialist and opportunistic avian nectarivores as pollinators of Aloe ferox, a plant that relies almost exclusively on ...[more]

PMID: 31362606

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Project description:A decline in species number often occurs after forest fragmentation and habitat loss, which usually results in the loss of ecological functions and a reduction in functional diversity in the forest fragments. However, it is uncertain whether these lost ecological functions are consistently maintained throughout continuous forests, and so the importance of these functions in continuous forests remains unknown. Point counts were used to assess both the taxonomic and functional diversity of specialist and generalist birds from sampling in a continuous primary forest compared with forest fragments in order to investigate the responses of these groups to forest fragmentation. We also measured alpha and beta diversity. The responses of specialists and generalists were similar when we assessed all bird species but were different when only passerines were considered. When examining passerines we found lower total taxonomic beta diversity for specialists than for generalists in the continuous forest, while taxonomic beta diversity was higher in the fragmented forest and similar between bird groups. However, total functional beta-diversity values indicated clearly higher trait regularity in continuous forest for specialists and higher trait regularity in fragments for generalists. Specialists showed significantly higher functional alpha diversity in comparison with generalists in the continuous forest, while both groups showed similar values in fragments. In passerines, species richness and alpha functional diversity of both specialist and generalist were explained by forest connectivity; but, only fragment size explained those parameters for specialist passerines. We suggest that considering subsets of the community with high similarity among species, as passerines, provides a better tool for understanding responses to forest fragmentation. Due to the regularity of specialists in continuous forest, their lost could highly affect functionality in forest fragments.

Dataset Information

Generalist birds outperform specialist sunbirds as pollinators of an African Aloe.

Publications

Generalist birds outperform specialist sunbirds as pollinators of an African Aloe.

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