Trade-offs among plant reproductive traits determine interactions with floral visitors

Title
Trade-offs among plant reproductive traits determine interactions with floral visitors
Publication Date
2021-12-10
Author(s)
Lanuza, Jose B
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0287-409X
Email: jbarraga@myune.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:jbarraga
Rader, Romina
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9056-9118
Email: rrader@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:rrader
Stavert, Jamie
Kendall, Liam K
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0671-0121
Email: lkendal2@myune.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:lkendal2
Saunders, Manu E
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0645-8277
Email: msaund28@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:msaund28
Bartomeus, Ignasi
Type of document
Working Paper
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Place of publication
United States of America
DOI
10.1101/2021.12.09.471959
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/55099
Abstract
Plant life-history strategies are constrained by cost-benefit trade-offs that determine plant form and function. However, despite recent advances in the understanding of trade-offs for vegetative and physiological traits, little is known about plant reproductive economics and how they constrain plant life-history strategies and shape interactions with floral visitors. Here, we investigate plant reproductive trade-offs and how these drive interactions with floral visitors using a dataset of 17 reproductive traits for 1,506 plant species from 28 plant-pollinator studies across 18 countries. We tested whether a plant’s reproductive strategy predicts its interactions with floral visitors and if the different reproductive traits predict the plant’s role within the pollination network. We found that over half of all plant reproductive trait variation was explained by two independent axes that encompassed plant form and function. Specifically, the first axis indicated the presence of a trade-off between flower number and flower size, while the second axis indicated a pollinator dependency trade-off. Plant reproductive trade-offs helped explain partly the presence or absence of interactions with floral visitors, but not differences in visitation rate. However, we did find important differences in the interaction level among floral visitor guilds on the different axes of trait variation. Finally, we found that plant size and floral rewards were the most important traits in the understanding of the plant species network role. Our results highlight the importance of plant reproductive trade-offs in determining plant life-history strategies and plant-pollinator interactions in a global context.
Link
Citation
bioRxiv
ISSN
2692-8205
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International

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