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Photo of Liam Kendall, employee at CEC

Liam Kendall

Researcher

Photo of Liam Kendall, employee at CEC

Covariation among reproductive traits in flowering plants shapes their interactions with pollinators

Author

  • Jose B. Lanuza
  • Romina Rader
  • Jamie Stavert
  • Liam K. Kendall
  • Manu E. Saunders
  • Ignasi Bartomeus

Summary, in English

Globally, plants display enormous variation in life-history strategies and trait combinations. However, evidence suggests that evolutionary and physiological constraints limit the number of plant ecological strategies. Although there have been recent advances in understanding correlations among plant traits, reproductive traits are rarely considered, despite their key role in shaping plant life-history strategies and interactions with pollinators. Here, using a global dataset of 18 reproductive traits for 1506 species, we investigate the reproductive spectrum of flowering plants to identify how it shapes interactions with pollinators. We show that over 50% of all trait variation is explained by the first two reproductive axes, which represent the negative correlation between flower number and flower size, and the negative correlation between autonomous selfing and floral display size. In addition, these reproductive axes were associated with the identity and number of visits of the distinct pollinator guilds. However, reproductive axes explain a relatively small amount of variance in pollinator interactions highlighting the need to incorporate other factors along with reproductive traits to fully explain large-scale patterns of plant–pollinator interactions. Our study identifies the major reproductive trait correlations in flowering plants and their role in shaping plant–pollinator interactions at a macro-ecological scale. These findings emphasise the importance of considering reproductive traits in the global spectrum of plant form and function, and the need to explore beyond floral morphological traits to broaden our understanding of plant–pollinator interactions. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Department/s

  • BECC: Biodiversity and Ecosystem services in a Changing Climate
  • Centre for Environmental and Climate Science (CEC)

Publishing year

2023-04-23

Language

English

Pages

2072-2084

Publication/Series

Functional Ecology

Volume

37

Issue

7

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Topic

  • Ecology

Keywords

  • life-history strategies
  • plant reproductive traits
  • plant–pollinator interactions

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0269-8463