Opposing patterns of altitude-driven pollinator turnover in the tropical and temperate Americas

Autor(en)

Agnes Sophie Dellinger, Ashley M. Hamilton, Carolyn A. Wessinger, Stacey Smith

Abstrakt

Abiotic factors (e.g., temperature, precipitation) vary markedly along elevational gradients and differentially affect major groups of pollinators. Ectothermic bees, for example, are impeded in visiting flowers by cold and rainy conditions common at high elevations, while endothermic hummingbirds may continue forag-ing under such conditions. Despite the possibly far-reaching effects of the abiotic environment on plant-pollinator interactions, we know little about how these factors play out at broad ecogeographic scales. We address this knowledge gap by investigating how pollination systems vary across elevations in 26 plant clades from the Americas. Specifically, we explore Cruden’s 1972 hypothesis that the harsh montane environment drives a turnover from insect to vertebrate pollination at higher elevations. We compared the elevational distribution and bioclimatic attributes for a total of 2,232 flowering plants and found that Cruden’s hypothesis holds only in the tropics. Above 307N and below 307S, plants pollinated by vertebrates (mostly hum-mingbirds) tend to occur at lower elevations than those pollinated by insects. We hypothesize that this latitudinal transition is due to the distribution of moist, forested habitats favored by vertebrate pol-linators, which are common at high elevations in the tropics but not in the temperate Americas.

Organisation(en)

Department für Botanik und Biodiversitätsforschung

Externe Organisation(en)

University of South Carolina, Columbia

Journal

The American Naturalist: a bi-monthly journal devoted to the advancement and correlation of the biological sciences

Band

202

Seiten

152-165

Anzahl der Seiten

14

ISSN

0003-0147

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1086/725017

Publikationsdatum

2023

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

106008 Botanik, 106012 Evolutionsforschung, 106042 Systematische Botanik

Schlagwörter

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/355acc75-2f34-4ec0-97c7-b86500a44a09