Pollination in the Rainforest: Scarce Visitors and Low Effective Pollinators Limit the Fruiting Success of Tropical Orchids

• Autor(a) principal: Reyes, Hortensia Cabrera
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Outros Autores: Draper, David, Marques, Isabel
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10451/50135
• topic: deception; orchids; pollination; rainforest; reproduction; tropical pollinators

The ability to distinguish between mere flower visitors and effective pollinators is of crucial importance to understand pollination ecology. Inefficient and scarce pollinators, coupled with unsuitable abiotic conditions, might explain a failure in plant reproductive success. Here, we quantified the levels of fruit set and tested the dependency on pollinators in 10 orchid species occurring in the tropical rainforest. We show that all species were pollinator-dependent with pollination limitation occurring in all the 20 studied populations. In fact, in 87% of our observation period no visitor was seen on the flowers studied. Floral visitors included flies, butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds although only a small number were performing effective pollinations. We conclude that although these orchid species were visited by different groups of visitors, few could be considered as legitimate pollinators, explaining why these tropical orchids present low values of fruit set.