Flower visitation by hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) in a temperate plant-pollinator network

10.7287/peerj.preprints.26516v2 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jan Klecka ◽

Jiří Hadrava ◽

Paolo Biella ◽

Asma Akter

Keyword(s):

Plant Traits ◽

Flower Colour ◽

Species Traits ◽

Consistent Difference ◽

Large Species ◽

Inflorescence Size ◽

Flower Visitation ◽

Nectar Feeding ◽

Visitation Frequency ◽

Colour Preferences

Hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) are among the most important pollinators, although they attract less attention than bees. They are usually thought to be rather opportunistic flower visitors, although previous studied demonstrated that they show colour preferences and their nectar feeding is affected by morphological constraints related to flower morphology. Despite the growing appreciation of hoverflies and other non-bee insects as pollinators, there is a lack of community-wide studies of flower visitation by syrphids. The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of flower visitation patterns in a species rich community of syrphids in a Central European grassland and to evaluate how species traits shape the structure of the plant-hoverfly flower visitation network. We found that different species varied in the level of specialisation, and while some species visited a similar spectre of flowers, others partitioned resources more strongly. There was a consistent difference in both specialisation and flower preferences between three syrphid subfamilies. Eristalinae and Pipizinae were more specialised than Syrphinae. Trait-based analyses showed that relative flower visitation i) increased with plant height, but most strongly in Eristalinae; ii) increased with inflorescence size in small species from all three subfamilies, but was independent of inflorescence size in large species of Eristalinae and Syrphinae; and iii) depended on flower colour, but in a subfamily-specific way. Eristalinae showed the strongest flower colour preferences for white flowers, Pipizinae visited mostly white and yellow flowers, while Syrphinae were less affected by flower colour. Exploration of the structure of the plant-hoverfly flower visitation network showed that the network was both modular and nested. We also found that there were almost no differences in specialisation and relative visitation frequency between males and females. Overall, we showed that flower visitation in syrphids was affected by phylogenetic relatedness, body size of syrphids and several plant traits.

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Flower visitation by hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) in a temperate plant-pollinator network

PeerJ ◽

10.7717/peerj.6025 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 ◽

pp. e6025 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Jan Klecka ◽

Jiří Hadrava ◽

Paolo Biella ◽

Asma Akter

Keyword(s):

Plant Traits ◽

Flower Colour ◽

Species Traits ◽

Consistent Difference ◽

Large Species ◽

Inflorescence Size ◽

Flower Visitation ◽

Nectar Feeding ◽

Visitation Frequency ◽

Colour Preferences

Hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) are among the most important pollinators, although they attract less attention than bees. They are usually thought to be rather opportunistic flower visitors, although previous studied demonstrated that they show colour preferences and their nectar feeding is affected by morphological constraints related to flower morphology. Despite the growing appreciation of hoverflies and other non-bee insects as pollinators, there is a lack of community-wide studies of flower visitation by syrphids. The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of flower visitation patterns in a species rich community of syrphids in a Central European grassland and to evaluate how species traits shape the structure of the plant-hoverfly flower visitation network. We found that different species varied in the level of specialisation, and while some species visited a similar spectre of flowers, others partitioned resources more strongly. There was a consistent difference in both specialisation and flower preferences between three syrphid subfamilies. Eristalinae and Pipizinae were more specialised than Syrphinae. Trait-based analyses showed that relative flower visitation (i) increased with plant height, but most strongly in Eristalinae; (ii) increased with inflorescence size in small species from all three subfamilies, but was independent of inflorescence size in large species of Eristalinae and Syrphinae; and (iii) depended on flower colour, but in a subfamily-specific way. Eristalinae showed the strongest flower colour preferences for white flowers, Pipizinae visited mostly white and yellow flowers, while Syrphinae were less affected by flower colour. Exploration of the structure of the plant-hoverfly flower visitation network showed that the network was both modular and nested. We also found that there were almost no differences in specialisation and relative visitation frequency between males and females. Overall, we showed that flower visitation in syrphids was affected by phylogenetic relatedness, body size of syrphids and several plant traits.

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Flower visitation by hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) in a temperate plant-pollinator network

10.7287/peerj.preprints.26516 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jan Klecka ◽

Jiří Hadrava ◽

Paolo Biella ◽

Asma Akter

Keyword(s):

Plant Traits ◽

Flower Colour ◽

Species Traits ◽

Consistent Difference ◽

Large Species ◽

Inflorescence Size ◽

Flower Visitation ◽

Nectar Feeding ◽

Visitation Frequency ◽

Colour Preferences

Hoverflies (Diptera: Syrphidae) are among the most important pollinators, although they attract less attention than bees. They are usually thought to be rather opportunistic flower visitors, although previous studied demonstrated that they show colour preferences and their nectar feeding is affected by morphological constraints related to flower morphology. Despite the growing appreciation of hoverflies and other non-bee insects as pollinators, there is a lack of community-wide studies of flower visitation by syrphids. The aim of this paper is to provide a detailed analysis of flower visitation patterns in a species rich community of syrphids in a Central European grassland and to evaluate how species traits shape the structure of the plant-hoverfly flower visitation network. We found that different species varied in the level of specialisation, and while some species visited a similar spectre of flowers, others partitioned resources more strongly. There was a consistent difference in both specialisation and flower preferences between three syrphid subfamilies. Eristalinae and Pipizinae were more specialised than Syrphinae. Trait-based analyses showed that relative flower visitation i) increased with plant height, but most strongly in Eristalinae; ii) increased with inflorescence size in small species from all three subfamilies, but was independent of inflorescence size in large species of Eristalinae and Syrphinae; and iii) depended on flower colour, but in a subfamily-specific way. Eristalinae showed the strongest flower colour preferences for white flowers, Pipizinae visited mostly white and yellow flowers, while Syrphinae were less affected by flower colour. Exploration of the structure of the plant-hoverfly flower visitation network showed that the network was both modular and nested. We also found that there were almost no differences in specialisation and relative visitation frequency between males and females. Overall, we showed that flower visitation in syrphids was affected by phylogenetic relatedness, body size of syrphids and several plant traits.

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A generalised mimicry system involving angiosperm flower colour, pollen and bumblebees’ innate colour preferences

Plant Systematics and Evolution ◽

10.1007/s00606-004-0249-5 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 252 (3-4) ◽

pp. 121-137 ◽

Cited By ~ 48

Author(s):

B. Heuschen ◽

A. Gumbert ◽

K. Lunau

Keyword(s):

Flower Colour ◽

Colour Preferences

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Geographic, environmental and biotic sources of variation in the nutrient relations of tropical montane forests

Journal of Tropical Ecology ◽

10.1017/s0266467415000619 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 32 (5) ◽

pp. 368-383 ◽

Cited By ~ 24

Author(s):

James W. Dalling ◽

Katherine Heineman ◽

Grizelle González ◽

Rebecca Ostertag

Keyword(s):

Plant Traits ◽

Species Traits ◽

Parent Material ◽

Montane Forests ◽

Plant Soil ◽

Tropical Montane Forests ◽

Decomposition Of Organic Matter ◽

High Investment ◽

Sources Of Variation ◽

Nutrient Relations

Abstract:Tropical montane forests (TMF) are associated with a widely observed suite of characteristics encompassing forest structure, plant traits and biogeochemistry. With respect to nutrient relations, montane forests are characterized by slow decomposition of organic matter, high investment in below-ground biomass and poor litter quality, relative to tropical lowland forests. However, within TMF there is considerable variation in substrate age, parent material, disturbance and species composition. Here we emphasize that many TMFs are likely to be co-limited by multiple nutrients, and that feedback among soil properties, species traits, microbial communities and environmental conditions drive forest productivity and soil carbon storage. To date, studies of the biogeochemistry of montane forests have been restricted to a few, mostly neotropical, sites and focused mainly on trees while ignoring mycorrhizas, epiphytes and microbial community structure. Incorporating the geographic, environmental and biotic variability in TMF will lead to a greater recognition of plant–soil feedbacks that are critical to understanding constraints on productivity, both under present conditions and under future climate, nitrogen-deposition and land-use scenarios.

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Joint species distribution modelling with HMSC-R

10.1101/603217 ◽

2019 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Gleb Tikhonov ◽

Øystein Opedal ◽

Nerea Abrego ◽

Aleksi Lehikoinen ◽

Otso Ovaskainen

Keyword(s):

Community Ecology ◽

Species Distribution ◽

Phylogenetic Relationships ◽

Real Data ◽

Species Traits ◽

Species Distribution Modelling ◽

List Type ◽

Large Species ◽

Distribution Modelling ◽

Environmental Covariates

AbstractJoint Species Distribution Modelling (JSDM) is becoming an increasingly popular statistical method for analyzing data in community ecology. JSDM allow the integration of community ecology data with data on environmental covariates, species traits, phylogenetic relationships, and the spatio-temporal context of the study, providing predictive insights into community assembly processes from non-manipulative observational data of species communities. Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (HMSC) is a general and flexible framework for fitting JSDMs, yet its full range of functionality has remained restricted to Matlab users only.To make HMSC accessible to the wider community of ecologists, we introduce HMSC-R 3.0, a user-friendly R implementation of the framework described in Ovaskainen et al (Ecology Letters, 20 (5), 561-576, 2017) and further extended in several later publications.We illustrate the use of the package by providing a series of five vignettes that apply HMSC-R 3.0 to simulated and real data. HMSC-R applications to simulated data involve single-species models, models of small communities, and models of large species communities. They demonstrate the estimation of species responses to environmental covariates and how these depend on species traits, as well as the estimation of residual species associations. They further demonstrate how HMSC-R can be applied to normally distributed data, count data, and presence-absence data. The real data consist of bird counts in a spatio-temporally structured dataset, environmental covariates, species traits and phylogenetic relationships. The vignettes demonstrate how to construct and fit many kinds of models, how to examine MCMC convergence, how to examine the explanatory and predictive powers of the models, how to assess parameter estimates, and how to make predictions.The package, along with the extended vignettes, makes JSDM fitting and post-processing easily accessible to ecologists familiar with R.

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Australian native flower colours: does nectar reward drive bee pollinator flower preferences?

10.1101/862110 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Mani Shrestha ◽

Jair E Garcia ◽

Martin Burd ◽

Adrian G Dyer

Keyword(s):

Flower Colour ◽

Chromatic Contrast ◽

Nectar Volume ◽

Eastern Australia ◽

Significant Difference ◽

Flower Colours ◽

Colour Category ◽

Colour Preferences ◽

Nectar Rewards ◽

Colour Signals

AbstractColour is an important signal that flowering plants use to attract insect pollinators like bees. Previous research in Germany has shown that nectar volume is higher for flower colours that are innately preferred by European bees, suggesting an important link between colour signals, bee preferences and floral rewards. In Australia, flower colour signals have evolved in parallel to the Northern hemisphere to enable easy discrimination and detection by the phylogenetically ancient trichromatic visual system of bees, and native Australian bees also possess similar innate colour preferences to European bees. We measured 59 spectral signatures from flowers present at two preserved native habitats in South Eastern Australia and tested whether there were any significant differences in the frequency of flowers presenting higher nectar rewards depending upon the colour category of the flower signals, as perceived by bees. We also tested if there was a significant correlation between chromatic contrast and the frequency of flowers presenting higher nectar rewards. For the entire sample, and for subsets excluding species in the Asteraceae and Orchidaceae, we found no significant difference among colour categories in the frequency of high nectar reward. This suggests that whilst such relationships between flower colour signals and nectar volume rewards have been observed at a field site in Germany, the effect is likely to be specific at a community level rather than a broad general principle that has resulted in the common signalling of bee flower colours around the world.

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Phenology, nectar production and visitation behaviour of bats on the flowers of the bromeliad Werauhia gladioliflora in a Costa Rican lowland rain forest

Journal of Tropical Ecology ◽

10.1017/s0266467407004129 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 23 (4) ◽

pp. 385-395 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Marco Tschapka ◽

Otto von Helversen

Keyword(s):

Costa Rican ◽

Infrared Light ◽

Plant Interactions ◽

Nectar Production ◽

Lowland Forest ◽

Physiological Factors ◽

Lowland Rain Forest ◽

Factors Affecting ◽

Flower Visitation ◽

Nectar Feeding

We studied the interaction between the bromeliad Werauhia gladioliflora and its flower visitors in the Caribbean lowland forest of Costa Rica, in order to quantify the mutual benefits to both partners. Over 6 y, the bromeliads flowered mainly between October and December; with an individual inflorescence flowering for an average of 34 d (n = 233 inflorescences). The bromeliad showed a flexible breeding system with autogamy occurring in addition to cross-pollination. Exclusive pollinators were small nectar-feeding bats (Phyllostomidae: Glossophaginae). The average volume of nectar produced per flower was 1.1 ml (n = 25 flowers). The main visitor was the bat Glossophaga commissarisi, which approached the flowers exclusively using hovering flight. Visitation by bats, measured by infrared light sensors, occurred throughout the night with an activity peak after midnight. Median hovering duration of the bats at the flowers was 320 ms (n = 1246 visits). Hourly mean of hovering duration was negatively correlated with hourly nectar secretion rate. The flower visitation behaviour of a bat over the night seems to be shaped by a combination of intrinsic physiological factors and by nectar availability. Size of both flowers and visitors make Werauhia gladioliflora a very accessible system for quantification of factors affecting evolution of bat–plant interactions.

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