A half-day flowering pattern helps plants sharing pollinators in an oceanic island community

Abstract

AbstractThe temporal pattern of flower opening and closure is a feature of the biology of many plant species, particularly those inhabiting oceanic islands where flowering generally lasts for only a few hours per day. Additionally, flower visitors often seek different floral sources on a timely basis, thus the relative timing of interactions is central to their status in pollination competition, or in the facilitation of pollination among co-flowering plants sharing pollinators. However, few studies have examined the impacts of daily temporal variation in flowering patterns on the pollinator network and competition on a community scale. In order to examine whether the daily pattern of flower opening and closure can impose temporal dynamics on interspecific interactions within a single day, plant–pollinator interaction networks (AM subweb and PM subweb) were quantified, and the relevant interactions between the two subwebs were compared using the Bray–Curtis dissimilarity of visitation frequencies in an oceanic island community (Paracel Islands, South China Sea). The role of species within networks and its variation between two subwebs were assessed by calculating the species-level specialization and species strength of each plant and pollinator species. The quantitative plant–pollinator interaction dissimilarity between morning and afternoon subsets was 0.69, and this value dropped to 0.58 when considering plant species flowering throughout the day. In our study, this dissimilarity between the two subwebs might be explained by the morning peak activity rather than a preference for morning flowers. No significant differences were detected in the species-level specialization and species strength of plants flowering all day from morning to afternoon at the community level. The flower visitation rates of native honeybee Apis cerana were not significantly different between morning and afternoon for most of the whole-day flowering plants. However, plant species only flowering either in the morning or the afternoon differed in the rate of visitation by A. cerana. The analyses of variation in the visitation rates of pollinators shared by plants within a single day in the studied community suggest that daily structuring at a community level and half-day staggered flowering during the morning or afternoon might reduce competitive interactions in oceanic insular habitats.