Are food‐deceptive orchid species really functionally specialized for pollinators?

Abstract

Food-deceptive orchid species have traditionally been considered pollination specialized to bees or butterflies. However, it is unclear to which concept of specialization this assumption is related; if to that of phenotypic specialization or of functional specialization. The main aim of this work was to verify if pollinators of five widespread food-deceptive orchid species (Anacamptis morio (L.) R.M. Bateman, Pridgeon & M.W. Chase, Anacamptis pyramidalis (L.) Rich., Himantoglossum adriaticum H. Baumann, Orchis purpurea Huds. and Orchis simia Lam.) predicted from the phenotypic point of view matched with the observed ones. We addressed the question by defining target orchids phenotypic specialization on the basis of their floral traits, and we compared the expected guilds of pollinators with the observed ones. Target orchid pollinators were collected by conducting a meta-analysis of the available literature and adding unpublished field observations, carried out in temperate dry grasslands in NE Italy. Pollinator species were subsequently grouped into guilds and differences in the guild spectra among orchid species grouped according to their phenotype were tested. In contradiction to expectations derived from the phenotypic point of view, food-deceptive orchid species were found to be highly functionally generalized for pollinators, and no differences in the pollinator guild spectra could be revealed among orchid groups. Our results may lead to reconsider food-deceptive orchid pollination ecology by revaluating the traditional equation orchid-pollination specialization

Species Richness, Ecology, and Prediction of Orchids in Central Europe: Local-Scale Study

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Local versus landscape-scale effects of anthropogenic land-use on forest species richness

“…This is particularly important since their extinction may have consequences on the whole ecosystem, leading to ecosystems collapse (Keith et al, 2013), even if the number of specialist species is usually small compared to the total number of species in a habitat. Since specialist species are experiencing higher extinction risk relative to generalist species (Buffa and Villani, 2012;Clavel et al, 2011;Fantinato et al, 2017;Rooney et al, 2004;Slaviero et al, 2016), their presence can be used as a synthetic indicator of the status of a habitat, or fine-filter surrogate species which represent more specific habitat features (Jones et al, 2016;Rodrigues and Brooks, 2007). If attentively selected, specialist species can thus be more effective in describing the relationship between disturbance patterns and biodiversity than the use of total species richness.…”

New insights into plants co‐existence in species‐rich communities: The pollination interaction perspective

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