Deconstructing pollinator community effectiveness

Effective pollination is a complex, context-dependent phenomenon determined by both species-level and community-level factors. While pollinator communities are constituted by interacting organisms in a shared environment, these factors are often simplified or overlooked when quantifying species-leve...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Willcox, Bryony K, Aizen, Marcelo Adrian, Cunningham, Saul A, Mayfield, Margaret M, Rader, Romina
Format: article
Status:Published version
Publication Date:2017
Country:Argentina
Institution:Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas
Repository:CONICET Digital (CONICET)
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ri.conicet.gov.ar:11336/58531
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/11336/58531
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Community Ecology
Pollination Efficiency
Pollinator
Seed Production
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1.6
https://purl.org/becyt/ford/1
Description
Summary:Effective pollination is a complex, context-dependent phenomenon determined by both species-level and community-level factors. While pollinator communities are constituted by interacting organisms in a shared environment, these factors are often simplified or overlooked when quantifying species-level pollinator effectiveness alone. Here, we review the recent literature on pollinator effectiveness to identify the pros and cons of existing methods and outline three important areas for future research: plant-pollinator interactions, heterospecific pollen transfer and variation in pollination outcomes. We conclude that pollinator community effectiveness needs to be acknowledged as a key property of pollination effectiveness in order to fully account for the suite of plant, pollinator and environmental factors known to influence different stages of successful pollination.