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Reduced pollinator service and elevated pollen limitation at the geographic range limit of an annual plant

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We examine the contribution of plant pollinator interactions to the geographic range limit of the California endemic plant Clarkia xantiana ssp. xantiana. We show that pollinator availability declined from the center to the margin of the geographic range consistently across four years of study.
creator Moeller, David A.
creator Geber, Monica A.
creator Eckhart, V. M. (Faculty/Staff)
creator Tiffin, Peter.
Title Reduced pollinator service and elevated pollen limitation at the geographic range limit of an annual plant
supporting host Grinnell College. Biology
Index Date 2012
Publisher Grinnell College
Genre Essays
Digital Origin reformatted digital
Extent 13 pages
Media Type application/pdf
note Mutualisms are well known to influence individual fitness and the population dynamics of partner species, but little is known about whether they influence species distributions and the location of geographic range limits. Here, we examine the contribution of plantG??pollinator interactions to the geographic range limit of the California endemic plant Clarkia xantiana ssp. xantiana. We show that pollinator availability declined from the center to the margin of the geographic range consistently across four years of study. This decline in pollinator availability was caused to a greater extent by variation in the abundance of generalist rather than specialist bee pollinators. Climate data suggest that patterns of precipitation in the current and previous year drove variation in bee abundance because of its effects on cues for bee emergence in the current year and the abundance of floral resources in the previous year. Experimental floral manipulations showed that marginal populations had greater outcross pollen limitation of reproduction, in parallel with the decline in pollinator abundance. Although plants are self-compatible, we found no evidence that autonomous selfing contributes to reproduction, and thus no evidence that it alleviates outcross pollen limitation in marginal populations. Furthermore, we found no association between the distance to the range edge and selfing rate, as estimated from sequence and microsatellite variation, indicating that the mating system has not evolved in response to the pollination environment at the range periphery. Overall, our results suggest that dependence on pollinators for reproduction may be an important constraint limiting range expansion in this system.
citation/reference Moeller, D. A., Geber, M. A., Eckhart, V. M., & Tiffin, P. (2012). Reduced pollinator service and elevated pollen limitation at the geographic range limit of an annual plant. Ecology, 93(5), 1036-1048.
Language English
Topic Pollination
Topic Plants
Topic Adaptation
Topic Climate.
Geographic California
Keyword reproductive assurance
Keyword Clarkia xantiana
Keyword evolutionary constraint
Keyword California endemic plant
Classification QK
Related Item Faculty Scholarship
Related Item Scholarship at Grinnell
Related Item Digital Grinnell
Identifier (hdl) http://hdl.handle.net/11084/26667
Identifier (u1) eckhart
Identifier (u2) BIO
Identifier (local) grinnell:26667
Access Condition Copyright to this work is held by the author(s), in accordance with United States copyright law (USC 17). Readers of this work have certain rights as defined by the law, including but not limited to fair use (17 USC 107 et seq.).
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