A phylogenetic perspective on ecological specialisation reveals hummingbird and insect pollinators have generalist diets

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F60077344%3A_____%2F24%3A00583506" target="_blank" >RIV/60077344:_____/24:00583506 - isvavai.cz</a>

Alternative codes found

RIV/60076658:12310/24:43908010

Result on the web

<a href="https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/oik.10208" target="_blank" >https://nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/oik.10208</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/oik.10208" target="_blank" >10.1111/oik.10208</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

A phylogenetic perspective on ecological specialisation reveals hummingbird and insect pollinators have generalist diets

Original language description

Specialisation in food resource use is a crucial process that fosters species coexistence in plant-animal networks, contributing to the maintenance of biodiversity, ecological complexity, and community stability. Notably, although there is a vast literature on ecological specialisation in pollination systems, the evolutionary similarity among the plant species visited by particular pollinators has been largely ignored. Here, we apply a robust phylogenetic approach to analyse whether the evolutionary relatedness of plant species is a significant factor in mediating pollinator visits and how it relates to the morphology of interacting species. We quantified ecological and clade specialisation of hummingbird and insect species in three mutualistic networks from the Costa Rican highlands and associated these metrics with species traits. We found that hummingbirds were overall ecologically more specialised than insects (i.e. visited a less diverse set of plant species). However, when evaluating the phylogenetic relatedness among the visited plant species, all hummingbird species and most insects had overdispersed diets, which indicates they visited phylogenetically distant plant species in the community. Moreover, a great proportion of these clade generalists visited plant species with a great variation in corolla length, showing a lack of preference for this morphological trait. Altogether, our results demonstrate that by incorporating plant phylogeny to network analysis, pollinator species were generalists and that corolla length weakly influences plant-pollinator interactions in the three studied networks. A phylogenetic perspective should occupy a central role in the study of specialisation since it contributes to understanding the interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes in mutualistic networks. Future research should focus on evaluating whether the phylogenetic structure of animal diets mediates patterns of interactions in different types of mutualisms and environmental contexts, linking these patterns to other floral traits. This knowledge may be valuable for deepening our comprehension of the underlying mechanisms shaping ecological networks.

Czech name

—

Czech description

—

Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

10618 - Ecology

Project

<a href="/en/project/GX19-28126X" target="_blank" >GX19-28126X: Testing mechanisms that maintain high species diversity in food webs by experimental manipulation of trophic cascades in a tropical rainforest</a><br>

Continuities

I - Institucionalni podpora na dlouhodoby koncepcni rozvoj vyzkumne organizace

Publication year

2024

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

Oikos

ISSN

0030-1299

e-ISSN

1600-0706

Volume of the periodical

2024

Issue of the periodical within the volume

4

Country of publishing house

US - UNITED STATES

Number of pages

12

Pages from-to

e10208

UT code for WoS article

001161321500001

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85184733670