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American Journal of Botany, Vol. 85, No. 3. (1998), pp. 402-411.We studied the patterns of adaptive radiation in Disa, a large orchid genus in southern Africa. A cladogram for 27 species was constructed using 44 morphological characters. Pollination systems were then mapped onto the phylogeny in order to analyze pathways of floral evolution. Shifts from one pollination system to another have been a major feature of the evolutionary diversification of Disa. Unlike many plant genera that are pollinated mainly by a single group of insects, radiation in Disa has encompassed nearly all major groups of pollinating insects; in all, 19 different specialized pollination systems have been found in the 27 species included in this analysis. Another striking pattern is the repeated evolution of broadly similar pollination systems in unrelated clades. For example, butterfly-pollinated flowers have evolved twice; showy deceptive flowers pollinated by carpenter bees, twice; long-spurred flowers pollinated by long-tongued flies, four times; night-scented flowers pollinated by moths, three times; and self-pollination, three times. This suggests that a few dominant pollinator species in a region may be sufficient to generate diversification in plants through repeated floral shifts that never retrace the same pathways.SD Johnson, HP Linder, KE Steiner, citeulike.org

Biotropica, Vol. 31, No. 3. (1999), pp. 466-477.We studied the bee fauna visiting a plant community of 10 species of flowering aquatic plants in an inundated savanna region in Bolivia. In total we observed 36 bee species in 17 genera at the flowers. Cluster analysis of the similarities among the plant species in terms of their visitor spectra showed a division into two groups: plants with inflorescence heights shorter than the grass height and plants with inflorescences projecting out of the surrounding vegetation. Larger bees of the genera Apis, Melipona, Bombus, and Xylocopa were observed only at flowers above the surrounding vegetation. Smaller, mainly solitary bees (e.g., Augochlorella, Ancyloscelis) visited flowers in the dense vegetation near the water surface. Analyses of the pollen loads revealed that most individuals were highly flower constant. When bees carried different pollen types, it was generally pollen from flowers within a single stratum. We discuss specialization, flower constancy, competition, and different foraging strategies as possible reasons for stratum fidelity.Andreas Gumbert, Jan Kunze, citeulike.org

Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, Vol. 344, No. 1307. (1994), pp. 83-90.There is a voluminous literature on pollination and dispersal, very little of which deals with the consequences of reproductive failure and its most extreme consequence: extinction. The risk of plant extinctions can be assessed by considering the probability of dispersal or pollinator failure, reproductive dependence on the mutualism and demographic dependence on seeds. Traits for ranking species rapidly according to these three criteria are indicated. Analysis of case studies suggests that plants often compensate for high risk in one of the three categories by low risk in another. For example, self-incompatible plants with rare specialist pollinators often propagate vegetatively. Some systems, including elements of the Cape flora and lowland tropical rain forest, lack compensatory traits and the risk of plant extinction from failed mutualism is high. 'What escapes the eye, however, is a much more insidious kind of extincnction: the extinction of ecological interactions' Janzen (1974).WJ Bond, citeulike.org

Ann Bot, Vol. 97, No. 3. (1 March 2006), pp. 317-344.* Background Seventeen distinct pollination systems are known for genera of sub-Saharan African Iridaceae and recurrent shifts in pollination system have evolved in those with ten or more species. Pollination by long-tongued anthophorine bees foraging for nectar and coincidentally acquiring pollen on some part of their bodies is the inferred ancestral pollination strategy for most genera of the large subfamilies Iridoideae and Crocoideae and may be ancestral for the latter. Derived strategies include pollination by long-proboscid flies, large butterflies, night-flying hovering and settling moths, hopliine beetles and sunbirds. Bee pollination is diverse, with active pollen collection by female bees occurring in several genera, vibratile systems in a few and non-volatile oil as a reward in one species. Long-proboscid fly pollination, which is apparently restricted to southern Africa, includes four separate syndromes using different sets of flies and plant species in different parts of the subcontinent. Small numbers of species use bibionid flies, short-proboscid flies or wasps for their pollination; only about 2 % of species use multiple pollinators and can be described as generalists. * Scope Using pollination observations for 375 species and based on repeated patterns of floral attractants and rewards, we infer pollination mechanisms for an additional 610 species. Matching pollination system to phylogeny or what is known about species relationships based on shared derived features, we infer repeated shifts in pollination system in some genera, as frequently as one shift for every five or six species of southern African Babiana or Gladiolus. Specialized systems using pollinators of one pollination group, or even a single pollinator species are the rule in the family. Shifts in pollination system are more frequent in genera of Crocoideae that have bilaterally symmetric flowers and a perianth tube, features that promote adaptive radiation by facilitating precise shifts in pollen placement, in conjunction with changes in flower colour, scent and tube length. * Conclusions Diversity of pollination systems explains in part the huge species diversity of Iridaceae in sub-Saharan Africa, and permits species packing locally. Pollination shifts are, however, seen as playing a secondary role in speciation by promoting reproductive isolation in peripheral, ecologically distinct populations in areas of diverse topography, climate and soils. Pollination of Iridaceae in Eurasia and the New World, where the family is also well represented, is poorly studied but appears less diverse, although pollination by both pollen- and oil-collecting bees is frequent and bird pollination rare.Peter Goldblatt, John Manning, citeulike.org

Ledyard Stebbins, citeulike.org

Ecology, Vol. 66, No. 2. (1985), pp. 554-563.The primary mechanism of competition for pollination between the two forest herbs Stellaria pubera and Claytonia virginica in piedmont North Carolina is interspecific pollen movement. The most common visitor, the bee fly Bombylius major, forages indiscriminately among flowers of the two species. In only one of five experiments did the presence of C. virginica reduce the pollinator visit rate per S. pubera flower, and in other experiments addition of C. virginica enhanced visit rate. Thus these plant species exhibit little or no competition through pollinator preference. In some natural populations, however, visits to S. pubera are frequently immediately preceded by a visit to C. virginica, and a flower receives less conspecific pollen and produces fewer seeds following such an interspecific visit than if the visitor has arrived directly from a conspecific flower. Interspecific pollen movement is responsible for most, if not all, of the reductions in seed set of S. pubera due to pollinator sharing. Although insects deposit a substantial amount of S. pubera pollen on stigmas of C. virginica, little C. virginica pollen is found on S. pubera stigmas. Moreover, application of foreign pollen to the stigma does not influence seed production of S. pubera. The effect of interspecific pollen movement is due to loss of conspecific pollen, not stigmatic interference.Diane Campbell, Alexander Motten, citeulike.org

Am. J. Bot., Vol. 92, No. 1. (1 January 2005), pp. 13-20.Despite recent increased interest in the frequency and evolutionary consequences of generalization in plant-pollinator systems, little is known on whether plant generalization on pollinators actually is a species-level trait. This paper addresses the following questions for the insect-pollinated shrub Lavandula latifolia: (1) Are different populations of this pollinator-generalist plant similarly generalized? (2) Within a highly generalized population, are all plants similarly pollinator-generalists? Comparable values for richness in pollinator species were obtained from individual- or population-specific rarefaction curves as the projected number of distinct pollinator species implicated in 100 flower visits (SRAR100). Simple counts of pollinator species recorded per individual or population (SOBS) were weakly or nonsignificantly correlated with corresponding SRAR100 figures and closely correlated with flower visitation frequency. The pollination system of L. latifolia was highly generalized at the regional level, but populations differed greatly in pollinator species richness (SRAR100). Within the population intensively studied, individual plants had quite variable degrees of generalization, comparable in magnitude to variation among populations. It is concluded that generalization was not an invariant, species-level property in L. latifolia. Furthermore, pollinator diversity estimates based on SOBS data may be heavily contingent on aspects related to both research design (sampling effort) and biological phenomena (variation in pollinator abundance or visitation rates), which may either mask or distort underlying ecological patterns of interest.Carlos Herrera, citeulike.org

New Phytologist, Vol. 169, No. 4. (2006), pp. 637-640.Susan Kephart, citeulike.org

Oikos, Vol. 88, No. 2. (2000), pp. 442-447.R Zamora, citeulike.org

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Vol. 2, No. 5. (May 1987), pp. 123-126.Pollination is one of the most important aspects of the life histories of most vascular plants. Until recently, there has been a broad consensus that heterospecific neighbors compete for pollinators, that this competition leads to phenological divergence, and that divergence leads to structured communities. New work is revealing a more complex web of interactions.Peter Feinsinger, citeulike.org