Facilitative pollinator sharing decreases with floral similarity in multiple systems
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Facilitative pollinator sharing decreases with floral similarity in multiple systems Melissa K. Ha1 · Scott A. Schneider2 · Lynn S. Adler3 Received: 5 September 2020 / Accepted: 25 September 2020 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Investigating the factors that determine whether interactions are competitive or facilitative is essential to understanding community structure and trait evolution. Co-flowering plants interact indirectly through shared pollinators, and meta-analyses suggest that phylogenetic relatedness and floral trait similarity may predict the outcome of these interactions. In a comparative approach, we manipulated the floral community across five focal species to assess how floral similarity and phylogenetic relatedness affect the outcome of interactions. To assess the extent of pollinator-mediated competition versus facilitation, we compared pollen limitation in five focal species growing with floral neighbors (either congeners or neighbors from a different family) relative to a control (growing alone). We measured floral morphology, color, and nectar traits to calculate multivariate floral similarity between species pairs and inferred a phylogeny to calculate phylogenetic distance. Pollinator-mediated interaction values were regressed against floral similarity and phylogenetic distance. We found evidence of pollinator-mediated facilitation in nine of 13 species pairs. Furthermore, floral similarity and phylogenetic distance reduced facilitative interactions, but the latter relationship was not significant when controlling for the identity of the focal species. Our results suggest that facilitative pollinator sharing is more common than reported in the literature, but co-flowering plant species with similar floral traits are less likely to facilitate pollination. A better understanding of the factors that promote facilitation versus competition has important potential applications for managing rare and invasive species. Keywords Comparative study · Competition-relatedness hypothesis · Floral traits · Phylogenetic distance · Pollinatormediated facilitation
Communicated by Susan Whitehead. In this comparative experiment, the strongest pollinator-mediated facilitation occurred between plant species pairs with contrasting floral traits. This informs prediction of biotic interactions. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-020-04770-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Melissa K. Ha [email protected] 1
Department of Biology and Ecology, Yuba College, 2088 North Beale Road, Marysville, CA 95901, USA
2
Systematic Entomology Laboratory, USDA, Agricultural Research Service, Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, 10300 Baltimore Avenue, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA
3
Biology Department, 221 Morrill Science Center, University of Massachusetts, 611 North Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01003, USA
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