Flower functioning in human-altered habitats

AIZEN, M. A.; VÁZQUEZ, D. P.

The Ecology and Evolution of Flowers

No Informado

Lugar: No Informado; Año: 2006; p. 1 - 1

The functioning and performance of flowers and their associated pollinators are susceptible to humandrivenhabitat alteration. Although habitat alteration is increasingly perceived as an important threat to theintegrity of the pollination process with practical and economic consequences, the relative importance ofthe mechanisms mediating the response of plant reproduction to habitat disturbance is not understoodclearly. Here we provide a conceptual framework to help identify critical variables and guide the design ofmore process- and mechanism-oriented studies of the effects on anthropogenic habitat disturbances onflower performance. With a series of qualitative matrices, we summarize the effects of different disturbancetypes on different plant and pollinator attributes and evaluate how these attributes affect differentaspects of pollination and plant reproduction. Although different disturbances can have distinctiveimmediate effects on plants and pollinators, they mediate their response by affecting a series of commonenvironmental, plant, and pollinator attributes. Our characterization of disturbance effects and theirconsequences could be translated easily into a path-analysis or other structural-model-building approach,which can help stimulate a more mechanistic focus for future research. Last, we identify some plant andanimal attributes whose roles in different aspects of pollination have been little studied or not addresseddirectly in the context of habitat alteration. We also discuss the role of plant sexual system and pollinationspecialization in modulating the reproductive response of plants to habitat alteration, and structuralfeatures of plant–pollinator networks that may buffer pollination function against extinction of individualspecies.