Plant-pollinator interactions in East Asia: a review

Abstract

Pollination studies in East Asia have been developing rapidly in recent decades. East Asia may provide important information on many aspects of plant-pollinator interactions because of the rich fauna and flora and highly heterogeneous environments that occur there. In this review, plant-pollinator interactions in East Asia were summarized. Bumblebees are important pollinators of many plant species in East Asia, as well as in Europe and North America. Native honeybees may also have important roles in pollination in East Asia. Bird pollination and hawkmoth pollination may be less common in East Asia than in North America. Geographic variation in pollination interactions is expected because several types of pollinators are rare or absent in some habitats or geographic regions. For example, specialized nectar-feeding vertebrates like sunbirds and pteropodid bats are absent from most of East Asia except for some areas in its southern part. Opportunistic nectar-feeding vertebrates may have important roles in pollination where specialized nectar-feeding vertebrates are absent. Human impacts on plant pollinator interactions are understudied in this region. However, climate change, habitat degradation, and invasive species may have negative impacts on plant-pollinator interactions and thus plant reproductive success there. The information available on the plant-pollinator interactions in East Asia is still limited because many plant and pollinator taxa and many types of habitats are understudied.

First record of non‐flying mammalian contributors to pollination in a tropical montane forest in Asia

“…Information on plant–mammal interactions in montane forests, especially pollination‐mediated relationships, is still lacking in tropical Asia (Corlett, 2004 ; Funamoto, 2019 ), although it has been reported that non‐flying mammals contribute to pollination in other montane regions (Dellinger et al, 2019 ; Lumer, 1980 ). The present study showed that non‐flying mammals may play an important role as pollinators in tropical montane forests, although the sample size was insufficient.…”

Intraspecific independent evolution of floral spur length in response to local flower visitor size in Japanese Aquilegia in different mountain regions

“…In another Japanese mountain region (the Taisetsu mountains), flowers are dominantly visited by bees and flies at the community level (Mizunaga & Kudo, 2017 ). A recent review has reported that Lepidoptera account for less than 10% of insect visitors to flowers in many parts of Asia, whereas bees and flies account for more than half (Funamoto, 2019 ). It is possible that in the central Japanese Alps, because only the locally abundant bumblebees contribute to pollination of A. buergeriana var.…”

Comparative analysis of volatile organic compounds from flowers attractive to honey bees and bumblebees

“…However, consequences of plant-pollinator interactions are geographically variable (Hiraiwa and Ushimaru 2017;Johnson et al 2017;Ollerton 2012;Ollerton 2017;Zanata et al 2017), and this variation is still not well documented and difficult to elucidate owing to various factors associated with pollination (Ollerton 2012). While many gymnosperm plants depend on the wind and water for their pollination (Funamoto 2019;Khalifa et al 2021), animal pollinators including insects, bats and birds have contributed to pollination and seed production of angiosperms. Most of flowering plants are not dependent on just one pollinator, but involve a broad spectrum of pollinators.…”