Low endemic bee diversity and very wide host range in lowland Fiji: support for the pollinator super-generalist hypothesis in island biogeography
Arthur Crichton A , Nikki Francis A , Seamus Doherty B , Marika Tuiwawa C , Sarah Hayes A , Mark I. Stevens
B D E and Michael P. Schwarz A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia.
B School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia.
C South Pacific Regional Herbarium, University of the South Pacific, PO Box 1168, Suva, Fiji.
D South Australian Museum, GPO Box 234, Adelaide, SA 5001, Australia.
E Corresponding author. Email: mark.stevens@samuseum.sa.gov.au
Pacific Conservation Biology 25(2) 135-142 https://doi.org/10.1071/PC18037
Submitted: 25 March 2018 Accepted: 20 May 2018 Published: 23 July 2018
Abstract
The success of invading plants in island ecosystems has often been inferred to result from ‘invader complexes’, where cointroduced plants and their specialist pollinators can reciprocally enhance each other’s spread. However, it has also been suggested that in islands with low pollinator diversity, those pollinators should evolve into super-generalists that may be able to pollinate a wide range of exotic plants, enabling the spread of exotic weeds. Fiji has a very depauperate endemic bee fauna and previous studies have suggested that its only lowland bee species, Homalictus fijiensis (Apoidea: Halictidae), has a very wide range of host plants. However, those studies only included a small number of endemic flowering plants. Our study expands observations of bee–flower interactions to explore host plant ranges of H. fijiensis and introduced bee species to include a wider variety of native and introduced plant species. We show that H. fijiensis does have a wider host range than introduced bees, including Apis mellifera (Apoidea: Apidae), and an ability to exploit extrafloral nectaries and poricidal anthers that are not utilised by the introduced bee species. Our results support the hypothesis that super-generalism can evolve in islands where pollinator diversity is low, and that this may make those islands susceptible to weed invasions.
Additional keywords: Homalictus, invader complexes, pollination, south-west Pacific, weeds
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