Contrasting pollination efficiency and effectiveness among flower visitors of Malva sylvestris, Borago officinalis and Onobrychis viciifolia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26786/1920-7603(2017)421Abstract
Biotic pollination is an important factor for ecosystem functioning and provides a substantial ecosystem service to human food security. Not all flower visitors are pollinators, however, and pollinators differ in their pollination performances. In this study, we determined the efficiencies of flower visitors to the plant species Malva sylvestris, Borago officinalis and Onobrychis viciifolia by analysing stigmatic pollen deposition. We further calculated pollinator effectiveness by scaling up single-visit pollen deposition using visitation frequency. Flower-visitor groups differed in their efficiencies at the single-visit level and not all of them deposited more pollen compared to unvisited stigmas. Bumblebees tended to be most efficient in depositing pollen per single visit across the three plant species. Due to the by far highest visitation frequencies, Apis mellifera showed the highest effectiveness in depositing pollen per hour for M. sylvestris and B. officinalis, but not for O. viciifolia, for which the Bombus lapidarius complex was both the most frequent and the most effective pollinator group. Hence, the most frequent flower visitors were most effective in our study. For non-dominant pollinator groups, however, visitation frequencies contributed disproportionally to pollinator effectiveness. Thus, combining pollen deposition per single-visit with visitation frequency is necessary to reveal true pollinator performance and to better understand flower-visitor interactions.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2017 Anna Gorenflo, Tim Diekötter, Mark van Kleunen, Volkmar Wolters, Frank Jauker
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
JPE is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1) Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2) Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
3) Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
To assure a broader targeted audience, content will be included into databases (such as EBSCO) and directories (such as DOAJ).