CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Animal-pollinated flowers may orientate resources for competing activities, as producing nectar to attract flower visitors but also saving nectar (through inhibiting nectar production or by final resorption) for the subsequent maturation of fruits and seeds. Nectar production is continuous since flower opens in Nicotiana longiflora and N. alata, but early nectar removals reduced total nectar secreted. The trade-off between nectar investment and seed production of different flower sets were experimentally assessed in manually-pollinated flowers with a different number of repeated nectar removals, expecting that those flowers with less nectar investments produce larger seed sets. In bothspecies results showed that the earlier the nectar removal performed during flower anthesis, the lower the total nectar secreted and the higher the number of seeds produced. This general pattern was clearerfor N. longiflora. The link between the total amount of nectar secreted and the female reproductive component of the flower implies that resources are limited for these two important flower processes aspollination and fruit and seed maturation. In consequence, nectar savings by an early nectar removal by pollinators can be interpreted as a trade-off between nectar production invested to pollinator attraction and the female reproductive component of individual flowers.

enviar mensaje