Pollinators visit related plant species across 29 plant-pollinator networks.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the evolution of specialization in host plant use by pollinators is often complicated by variability in the ecological context of specialization. Flowering communities offer their pollinators varying numbers and proportions of floral resources, and the uniformity observed in these floral resources is, to some degree, due to shared ancestry. Here, we find that pollinators visit related plant species more so than expected by chance throughout 29 plant-pollinator networks of varying sizes, with "clade specialization" increasing with community size. As predicted, less versatile pollinators showed more clade specialization overall. We then asked whether this clade specialization varied with the ratio of pollinator species to plant species such that pollinators were changing their

SUBMITTER: Vamosi JC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4203281 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature