一项研究报告说，失去一种传粉物种可能对植物繁殖产生不良影响，其结果是，全球传粉物种的衰退为开花植物和农作物带来的麻烦可能比此前估计得更多。10多年以来，研究报告了诸如蜂和蝴蝶等传播花粉的物种的衰退，但是一些研究已经提示一个生态系统中的植物群落可以承受大多数传粉物种的消失。Berry J. Brosi 和Heather M. Briggs研究了即便只失去一种传粉物种是否也可能为植物繁殖带来麻烦。这组科研人员在科罗拉多州落基山的亚高山草地的研究实验田中暂时移走了一种蜂。仅仅失去一种物种就减少了余下的蜂的“花忠诚度”——它们对特定植物物种的忠诚度。而这又会导致在同一物种的植株个体之间的花粉传播得更少，这最终反映在了植物种子的产量减少以及植物繁殖成功的减少。这组作者说，这些发现提示失去一种传粉物种就能改变其他传粉者的行为，并且能够对植物繁殖产生不良影响。（生物谷 Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐的英文摘要
PNAS doi: 10.1073/pnas.1307438110
Single pollinator species losses reduce floral fidelity and plant reproductive function
Berry J. Brosia,b,1 and Heather M. Briggs
Understanding the functional impacts of pollinator species losses on plant populations is critical given ongoing pollinator declines. Simulation models of pollination networks suggest that plant communities will be resilient to losing many or even most of the pollinator species in an ecosystem. These predictions, however, have not been tested empirically and implicitly assume that pollination efficacy is unaffected by interactions with interspecific competitors. By contrast, ecological theory and data from a wide range of ecosystems show that interspecific competition can drive variation in ecological specialization over short timescales via behavioral or morphological plasticity, although the potential implications of such changes in specialization for ecosystem functioning remain unexplored. We conducted manipulative field experiments in which we temporarily removed single pollinator species from study plots in subalpine meadows, to test the hypothesis that interactions between pollinator species can shape individual species’ functional roles via changes in foraging specialization. We show that loss of a single pollinator species reduces floral fidelity (short-term specialization) in the remaining pollinators, with significant implications for ecosystem functioning in terms of reduced plant reproduction, even when potentially effective pollinators remained in the system. Our results suggest that ongoing pollinator declines may have more serious negative implications for plant communities than is currently assumed. More broadly, we show that the individual functional contributions of species can be dynamic and shaped by the community of interspecific competitors, thereby documenting a distinct mechanism for how biodiversity can drive ecosystem functioning, with potential relevance to a wide range of taxa and systems.
