Effects Of Sharing Pollinator-mediated Interspecific Interactions On Floral Traits And Reproductive Fitness

The pollinator-mediated interspecific interactions are closely related to floral traits.The convergence or differentiation of floral traits may lead to change in the preferences and activities of pollinators,thus affecting the reproductive success of plants.The degree of sharing pollinators and plant-pollinator interaction were quantified by pollination niche,which provided a new way to study pollination interaction among plants.However,the sharing pollinator-mediated interspecific interactions and it roles in species coexistence are still unclear.In order to explore the relationship between pollination interactions and floral traits diversity in communities,and to understand the role of pollinator-mediated interactions in species coexistence.This paper studied the effects of pollination interactions among plants on floral traits and reproductive fitness in typical alpine meadow and swamp meadow in the eastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.The results are as follows:(1)In the eastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau,using pollination niche to measure the sharing pollinator-mediated interspecific interaction,is it competition or facilitation? Is this interaction beneficial to plant reproduction?(2)Does the sharing pollinator-mediated interspecific interaction affect the pattern of aggregation or divergence of floral traits among plants? What is the mechanism?(3)Are the sharing pollinator-mediated interspecific interactions consistent among different communities?(4)Does plant pollination niche play an important role in species coexistence?The results show that: 1)In the eastern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau,the species with higher degree of pollination niche overlap had higher visitation rate and higher seed set.The results showed that sharing pollinators among plants in high altitude plant communities was conducive to the success of plant reproduction.Interspecific pollination interaction is mutualistic.2)The species with higher pollination niche overlap had more similar floral traits,resulting in higher visitation rate.It is suggested that sharing pollinator-mediated facilitation will lead to the convergence of floral traits.In the pollination network module,the degree of sharing pollinators among plants is higher,the visitation rate is higher,and the floral traits are more similar,which proves that there is the same mechanism among plants with stronger interaction.3)In typical alpine meadow and swamp meadow,pollination facilitation is common among plants.In the swamp meadow communities,the pollinator-mediated facilitation led to the similarity of floral traits,and the plants with strong interaction may have low similarity of floral traits due to the 1imiting similarity.In the typical alpine meadow communities,the pollination facilitation did not lead to the similarity of floral traits,but the plants with strong interaction appeared the similarity of floral traits caused by pollination facilitation.These results indicated that the convergence of floral traits caused by pollination facilitation existed in different grassland types,but the mechanism might be different.4)The rare species in the community tended to have larger pollination niche breadth and produce more seeds,indicating that plants with weaker resource competition had higher competitive advantage of pollinators,which was conducive to the coexistence of species in the community.From the perspective of pollination biology,our research explores the relationship between pollination interactions and floral traits distribution patterns by using the pollination niche.To explore the role of pollinator mediated interspecific interactions in species coexistence.The research on the mechanism of species coexistence in alpine meadow plant community through pollinator mediated interspecific interaction provides a new idea for rare species to coexist with other plants in the community.