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Zygomorphic flowers have fewer potential pollinator species

View ORCID ProfileJeremy B. Yoder, Giancarlo Gomez, View ORCID ProfileColin J. Carlson
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/743872
Jeremy B. Yoder
1Department of Biology, California State University Northridge, Los Angeles, CA, 91330, USA
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  • For correspondence: jeremy.yoder@csun.edu
Giancarlo Gomez
1Department of Biology, California State University Northridge, Los Angeles, CA, 91330, USA
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Colin J. Carlson
2Department of Biology, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C. 20057, USA
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  • ORCID record for Colin J. Carlson
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ABSTRACT

Botanists have long identified bilaterally symmetrical (zygomorphic) flowers with more specialized pollination interactions than radially symmetrical (actinomorphic) flowers. Zygomorphic flowers facilitate more precise contact with pollinators, guide pollinator behaviour, and exclude less effective pollinators. However, whether zygomorphic flowers are actually visited by a smaller subset of available pollinator species has not been broadly evaluated. We compiled 53,609 floral visitation records in 159 communities and classified the plants’ floral symmetry. Globally and within individual communities, plants with zygomorphic flowers are indeed visited by fewer species. At the same time, zygomorphic flowers share a somewhat larger proportion of their visitor species with other co-occurring plants, and have particularly high sharing with co-occurring plants that also have zygomorphic flowers. Visitation sub-networks for zygomorphic species also show differences that may arise from reduced visitor diversity, including greater connectance, greater web asymmetry, and lower coextinction robustness of both plants and visitor species — but these changes do not necessarily translate to whole plant-visitor communities. These results provide context for widely documented associations between zygomorphy and diversification and imply that species with zygomorphic flowers may face greater risk of extinction due to pollinator loss.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Footnotes

  • Update to reflect revisions for publication

  • https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.gxd2547j3

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted August 06, 2020.
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Zygomorphic flowers have fewer potential pollinator species
Jeremy B. Yoder, Giancarlo Gomez, Colin J. Carlson
bioRxiv 743872; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/743872
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Zygomorphic flowers have fewer potential pollinator species
Jeremy B. Yoder, Giancarlo Gomez, Colin J. Carlson
bioRxiv 743872; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/743872

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