Pollinator specialization increases with a decrease in a mass-flowering plant in networks inferred from DNA metabarcoding.

ABSTRACT: How native mass-flowering plants affect the specialization of insects at individual and species levels and the consequences for pollination networks have received much less attention than for mass-flowering crops or alien species and basically remain unexplored.Using existing DNA metabarcoding data on the pollen loads of 402 flower-visiting insects, we assessed the effects of a native mass-flowering plant of high reward quality, the shrub Rhododendron ferrugineum, on pollination networks by investigating: (a) the food niches of individual pollinators and pollinator species and (b) the structure of individual and species networks in subalpine heathland patches with extremely contrasted densities of R. ferrugineum.Relative to its high abundance in high-density patches, the shru

SUBMITTER: Pornon A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6953672 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature