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Urbanization threaten the pollination of Gentiana dahurica

Q. Hou,X. Pang,Yu-pei Wang,K. Sun,L. Jia,Shi-hu Zhang,Qiao-xia Li

Published 2019 in Scientific Reports

ABSTRACT

With rapid spread of the urbanization, many environmental factors, such as climate, soil pH and nutrients have been changed. However, the plant pollination affected by urbanization was seldom conducted. Here, we studied the flower visitation rates, seed production, pollen limitation and flower morphological characters of Gentiana dahurica at 3 populations along an urban-peri-urban gradient around Xi’ning over 4 consecutive years, aiming to test the effects of urbanization on plant pollination service. Our results showed that the pollinator visit frequencies, interannual stability of pollinator assemblages and visit frequencies declined with the intensification of urbanization. As urbanization intensified, plant borne more flowers and the flower morphological sizes became “longer” (the length of flowers, filaments and styles were increased, but the width of flowers kept stable at the 3 populations); the flower duration, especially the female phase duration prolonged. The seed-set ratio of G. dahurica in natural condition decreased and more severe pollen limitation occurred in more urbanized populations. Also, an interannual variation of seed-set ratio and index of pollen limitation (IPL), which related with the variation of pollinator visit frequencies, were found in this study. These results suggest that the pollination service can be threatened by urbanization over a long-time interval for G. dahurica. This finding highlights the importance of pollinator affections acting on plant pollination system. Additionally, as pollinator assemblages and visit frequencies interannually changed, a long-time scale observation is needed to understand the plant-pollinator relationships.

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