Facilitating sympatric species coexistence via pollinator partitioning in endemic tropical trees of Madagascar |
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Authors: | Michelle L Zjhra |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Biology, Georgia Southern University, Biology Bdg, 202 Georgia Ave, Box 8042, Statesboro, GA 30460-8042, USA |
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Abstract: | Summary The island of Madagascar ranks second to the neotropics in diversity of Bignoniaceae. Tribe Coleeae (Bignoniaceae) is a monophyletic
group of tropical trees endemic to Madagascar and surrounding islands. The Masoala assemblage of Coleeae, in northeastern
Madagascar, utilizes four mechanisms for avoiding competition via niche specialization: (1) morphologically via characters
that comprise syndromes, explaining part of the pattern in this system – although the syndrome concept is not perfect; (2)
spatially via vertical stratification and potentially pollen placement; (3) temporally via phenological stagger; (4) ethologically
via flowering duration and display. The 13 sympatric species of understory treelets and canopy trees did receive low flower visitor numbers. Contrary to the prevailing view of pollination systems where generalized systems predict
equivalency between floral traits and pollinators, I found that different pollinators pollinated the 13 species of trees, that floral characters of different trees did not overlap in multidimensional phenotype space, and that few species of trees were visited by more than two pollinator groups. The use of multiple niches is potentially important in
understanding both the origin and maintenance of tropical tree diversity. |
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Keywords: | Bignoniaceae cauliflory coexistence Coleeae Madagascar niche specialization pollination syndrome tropical diversity |
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