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  • Essay / Reciprocal coevolution and plant-pollinator interactions

    Interactions between plants and their pollinators have been very frequently discussed in the past. Since Darwinian times, the subject has flourished. Two aspects that play an important role in this relationship have been affected by history. The first being floral mechanisms and ecological relationships between plants and the second the evolutionary processes that affect pollination (1). As interest has grown, approaches have become more specific and detailed, leading to a finer-grained view of the specialization of plant-pollinator relationships. Due to the specific interactions between the plant and its pollinator, a term “plant syndrome” was introduced, which allows us to distinguish how a plant was pollinated (2). Some even suggest that latitude and high specificity of interactions lead to specialization in pollination patterns, as each region requires varied behavioral patterns (3), as shown in Figure 1.Fig. 1. Relationships between latitude and pollinator specialization for the community survey and milkweed datasets. A. Community surveys on plant-flower visitor relationships. The average number of flower visitor species per plant species was log transformed. Pearson product moment correlation: r=0.33, df=33, p=0.051. b. Milkweed pollinators. Spearman rank correlation: r=0.33, n=91, p=0.002. c. milkweed ollinators, corrected for sampling effort. Spearman rank correlation: r=0.09, n=59, p=0.51. Tylianakis et al (2008) suggested that pollinator interaction networks may be subject to change due to anthropogenic influence. Climate change, habitat fragmentation, levels of pesticides and pollution have a potential effect... middle of article.......5. National Research Council. 2007. Status of pollinators in North America. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.6. VÁZQUEZ, DP and AIZEN, MA, 2003. Null model analyzes of specialization in plant-pollinator interactions. Ecology, 84(9), pp. 2493-2501.7. BURKLE, LA, MARLIN, JC and KNIGHT, TM, 2013. Plant-pollinator interactions over 120 years: species loss, co-occurrence and function. Science, 340(6127), pages 1611-1615.8. TYLIANAKIS, JM, DIDHAM, RK, BASCOMPTE, J., 2008. Ecol. Lett. 11, 1351.9. CRESSWELL, I. 2005. Accurate theoretical prediction of pollinator-mediated gene dispersal Ecology 86:574–578.10. SNOW AA, SPIRA TP, Simpson R, Klips RA. 1996. The ecology of geitonogamic pollination. In: Lloyd DG, Barrett SCH. ed. Floral biology: studies on the floral evolution of plants pollinated by animals. New York: Chapman and Hall, 191–216.