Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Krauss, Siegfried L.
• Phillips, Ryan D.
• Karron, Jeffrey D.
• Johnson, Steven D.
• Roberts, David G.
• Hopper, Stephen D.

Titel

Novel Consequences of Bird Pollination for Plant Mating

Ist Teil von

• Trends in plant science, 2017-05, Vol.22 (5), p.395-410

Ort / Verlag

England: Elsevier Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Pollinator behaviour has profound effects on plant mating. Pollinators are predicted to minimise energetic costs during foraging bouts by moving between nearby flowers. However, a review of plant mating system studies reveals a mismatch between behavioural predictions and pollen-mediated gene dispersal in bird-pollinated plants. Paternal diversity of these plants is twice that of plants pollinated solely by insects. Comparison with the behaviour of other pollinator groups suggests that birds promote pollen dispersal through a combination of high mobility, limited grooming, and intra- and interspecies aggression. Future opportunities to test these predictions include seed paternity assignment following pollinator exclusion experiments, single pollen grain genotyping, new tracking technologies for small pollinators, and motion-triggered cameras and ethological experimentation for quantifying pollinator behaviour. Recent molecular studies of mating patterns in flowering plants are providing important insights into the ecological genetic consequences of bird pollination. These studies show that bird-pollinated plants are typically sired by nearly twice as many mates as are insect-pollinated plants. High mobility, limited grooming, and intra- and interspecies aggression are likely to be key behavioural characteristics of birds that facilitate pollen carryover and promote high mate diversity in the plants that they pollinate.