Youngsteadt Elsa, Irwin Rebecca E, Fowler Alison, Bertone Matthew A, Giacomini Sara June, Kunz Michael, Suiter Dale, Sorenson Clyde E
Am Nat. 2018 Apr;191(4):539-546. doi: 10.1086/696124. Epub 2018 Feb 5.
Because carnivorous plants rely on arthropods as pollinators and prey, they risk consuming would-be mutualists. We examined this potential conflict in the Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), whose pollinators were previously unknown. Diverse arthropods from two classes and nine orders visited flowers; 56% of visitors carried D. muscipula pollen, often mixed with pollen of coflowering species. Within this diverse, generalized community, certain bee and beetle species appear to be the most important pollinators, on the basis of their abundance, pollen load size, and pollen fidelity. Dionaea muscipula prey spanned four invertebrate classes and 11 orders; spiders, beetles, and ants were most common. At the family and species levels, few taxa were shared between traps and flowers, yielding a near-zero value of niche overlap for these potentially competing structures. Spatial separation of traps and flowers may contribute to partitioning the invertebrate community between nutritional and reproductive functions in D. muscipula.
由于食虫植物依赖节肢动物作为传粉者和猎物，它们有可能吃掉潜在的互利共生者。我们研究了捕蝇草（Dionaea muscipula）中的这种潜在冲突，其传粉者此前尚不为人知。来自两个纲和九个目的多种节肢动物访问了花朵；56%的访客携带捕蝇草花粉，且常常与同期开花物种的花粉混合。在这个多样的、泛化的群落中，某些蜜蜂和甲虫物种基于其数量、花粉负载量和花粉保真度，似乎是最重要的传粉者。捕蝇草的猎物涵盖四个无脊椎动物纲和11个目；蜘蛛、甲虫和蚂蚁最为常见。在科和物种层面，陷阱和花朵之间很少有分类群重叠，这些潜在竞争结构的生态位重叠值近乎为零。陷阱和花朵的空间分离可能有助于在捕蝇草中划分无脊椎动物群落的营养和繁殖功能。
