Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Vega, Clara
• Álvarez‐Pérez, Sergio
• Albaladejo, Rafael G.
• Steenhuisen, Sandy‐Lynn
• Lachance, Marc‐André
• Johnson, Steven D.
• Herrera, Carlos M.

Titel

The role of plant–pollinator interactions in structuring nectar microbial communities

Ist Teil von

• The Journal of ecology, 2021-09, Vol.109 (9), p.3379-3395

Ort / Verlag

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Floral nectar harbours a diverse microbiome of yeasts and bacteria that depend predominantly on animal visitors for their dispersal. Since pollinators visit specific sets of flowers and carry their own unique microbiota, we hypothesize that plant species visited by the same set of pollinators may support non‐random nectar microbial communities linked together by the type of pollinator. Here we explore the importance of plant–pollinator interactions in the assembly of nectar microbiome and study the role of plant geographic location as a determinant of microbial community composition. We intensively sampled the nectar of 282 flowers of 48 plant species with beetles, birds, long‐tongued and short‐tongued insects as pollinators in wild populations in South Africa, one of the world's biodiversity hotspots, and using molecular techniques we identified nectar yeast and bacteria taxa. The analyses provided new insights into the richness, geographic structure and phylogenetic characterization of nectar microbiome, and compared patterns of composition of bacteria and yeast communities in relation to plant and pollinator guild. Our results showed that plant–pollinator interactions played a crucial role in shaping nectar microbial communities. Plants visited by different pollinator guilds supported significantly different yeast and bacterial communities. The pollinator guild also contributed to the maintenance of beta diversity and phylogenetic microbial segregation. The results revealed different patterns for yeast and bacteria; whereas plants visited by beetles supported the highest richness and phylogenetic diversity of yeasts, bacteria communities were significantly more diverse in plants visited by other insect groups. We found no clear microbial spatial segregation at different geographical scales for bacteria, and only the phylogenetic similarity of yeast composition was correlated significantly with geography. Synthesis. Interactions of animal vector, plant host traits and microbe physiology contribute to microbial community assemblages in nectar. Our results suggest that plants visited by the same pollinator guild have a characteristic nectar microbiota signature that may transcends the geographic region they are in. Contrasted patterns for yeast and bacteria stress the need for future work aimed at better understanding the causes and consequences of the importance of plants and pollinators in shaping nectar microbial communities in nature. Floral nectar harbours a diverse microbiome of yeasts and bacteria but the understanding of the processes responsible for nectar microbial communities structure remains limited. We found a fundamental importance of plant–pollinator interactions in shaping nectar microbial communities that contribute to the maintenance of beta diversity and phylogenetic microbial segregation. Our study suggests that plants visited by the same pollinator guild have a characteristic nectar microbiota signature that may transcend the geographic region they are in. Picture: Long‐tongued tabanid fly Philoliche aethiopica on Cycnium racemosum.