Arceo-Gómez Gerardo, Kaczorowski Rainee L, Patel Cheril, Ashman Tia-Lynn
Department of Biological Sciences, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, 37614, USA.
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, 15260, USA.
Oecologia. 2019 Apr;189(4):1041-1047. doi: 10.1007/s00442-019-04379-z. Epub 2019 Mar 15.
Evaluation of pollen transfer in wild plant communities revealing heterospecific pollen receipt is common, yet experimental hand pollinations have revealed high among-species variation in the magnitude of its effect on recipient fitness. The causes of this among-species variation are unknown, however, prompting the investigation of underlying factors. Here, we conducted a hand-pollination experiment with ten co-flowering species to determine whether the effects of heterospecific pollen receipt are mediated by the pollen donor or recipient species alone, or whether the effects are determined by the interaction between them. We further assessed species traits potentially mediating interactive effects in heterospecific pollen receipt by evaluating the relationship between heterospecific pollen effect size and three different predictors reflecting a unique combination of pollen donor and recipient characteristics. Our results show, for the first time, that the magnitude of the heterospecific pollen receipt effect is determined by the specific combination of donor and recipient species (i.e., interactive effects). However, we were unable to uncover the specific combination of traits mediating these effects. Overall, our study provides strong evidence that an understanding of heterospecific pollen receipt effects based on recipient or donor characteristics alone may be insufficient. This study is an important step toward an understanding of consequences of heterospecific pollen receipt in co-flowering communities.
在野生植物群落中，对揭示异种花粉接受情况的花粉转移进行评估很常见，但实验性人工授粉显示，其对受体适合度的影响程度在物种间存在很大差异。然而，这种物种间差异的原因尚不清楚，这促使人们对潜在因素进行调查。在这里，我们对十种同时开花的物种进行了人工授粉实验，以确定异种花粉接受的影响是仅由花粉供体或受体物种介导，还是由它们之间的相互作用决定。我们还通过评估异种花粉效应大小与反映花粉供体和受体特征独特组合的三个不同预测因子之间的关系，进一步评估了可能介导异种花粉接受中相互作用效应的物种特征。我们的结果首次表明，异种花粉接受效应的大小由供体和受体物种的特定组合（即相互作用效应）决定。然而，我们无法揭示介导这些效应的特征的具体组合。总体而言，我们的研究提供了有力证据，表明仅基于受体或供体特征来理解异种花粉接受效应可能是不够的。这项研究是朝着理解同时开花群落中异种花粉接受后果迈出的重要一步。
