Experimental loss of generalist plants reveals alterations in plant-pollinator interactions and a constrained flexibility of foraging.

ABSTRACT: Species extinctions undermine ecosystem functioning, with the loss of a small subset of functionally important species having a disproportionate impact. However, little is known about the effects of species loss on plant-pollinator interactions. We addressed this issue in a field experiment by removing the plant species with the highest visitation frequency, then measuring the impact of plant removal on flower visitation, pollinator effectiveness and insect foraging in several sites. Our results show that total visitation decreased exponentially after removing 1-4 most visited plants, suggesting that these plants could benefit co-occurring ones by maintaining high flower visitor abundances. Although we found large variation among plant species, the redistribution of the pollinator guild af

SUBMITTER: Biella P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6517441 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature