Exotic plants promote pollination niche overlap in an agroecosystem

MARRERO, HUGO J.; TORRETTA, JUAN P.; HODARA, KARINA; VÁZQUEZ, DIEGO P.; MEDAN, DIEGO

AGRICULTURE, ECOSYSTEMS AND ENVIRONMENT

ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2017 vol. 239 p. 304 - 309

0167-8809

Agricultural land management modifies ecosystem structure and functioning in natural landscapes. Pollinators are a key functional group that may suffer from such intensification. Here we evaluate how agricultural land management influences the diversity of pollen transported by pollinators and the pollination niche overlap among plants. To this end, we described pollen transport networks (which allowassessing the contribution of pollinators to the flow of pollen among plants) in a series of agricultural and restored fragments. We found that agricultural land management was associated to increased diversity oftransported pollen and pollination niche overlap among plants. In addition, the greater pollination niche overlap in agricultural fragmentswas associated with the ncreased abundance of exotic plants. Our results indicate that in our study system agricultural land management has significantly increased the diversity of pollen and the pollination niche overlap in natural communities by promoting exotic plants and generalized plant-pollinator interactions.