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Evidence for pollen limitation of a native plant in invaded communities

  • Plant-animal interactions - Original research
  • Published:
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Abstract

Animal-pollinated invasive species have frequently been demonstrated to outcompete native species for pollinator attention, which can have detrimental effects on the reproductive success and population dynamics of native species. Many animal-pollinated invasive species exhibit showy flowers and provide substantial rewards, allowing them to act as pollinator ‘magnets’, which, at a large scale, can attract more pollinators to an area, but, at a smaller scale, may reduce compatible pollen flow to local native species, possibly explaining why most studies detect competition. By performing pollen limitation experiments of populations in both invaded and uninvaded sites, we demonstrate that the invasive plant Lythrum salicaria appears to facilitate, rather than hinder, the reproductive success of native confamilial Decodon verticillatus, even at a small scale, in a wetland habitat in southeastern Ontario. We found no evidence for a magnet species effect on pollinator attraction to invaded sites. Germination experiments confirmed that seeds from invaded sites had similar germination rates to those from uninvaded sites, making it unlikely that a difference in inbreeding was masking competitive effects. We describe several explanations for our findings. Notably, there were no differences in seed set among populations at invaded and uninvaded sites. Our results underscore the inherent complexity of studying the ecological impacts of invasive species on natives.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Anne-Gaëlle Rolland Lagan for writing the program that we used to count our seeds and for very useful feedback on earlier drafts of the manuscript. S. Monckton and J. Lachapelle provided assistance with the field and greenhouse components of our experiments; C. Eckert provided invaluable advice on D. verticillatus population locations and growing protocols; H. Rundle provided useful discussions on statistical analyses and The Queen’s University Biological Station (QUBS) and its management personnel provided support in the field. The experiments comply with the current laws of the country in which they were performed (Canada). Funding was provided by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant to R.D.S., an Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) to E.M.D., and an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award (USRA) to V.M.K.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, University of Ottawa, 30 Marie-Curie (160 Gendron), Ottawa, ON, K1 N 6N5, Canada

    Elizabeth M. Da Silva, Vashti M. King, Jake L. Russell-Mercier & Risa D. Sargent

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  1. Elizabeth M. Da Silva
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  2. Vashti M. King
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  3. Jake L. Russell-Mercier
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  4. Risa D. Sargent
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Correspondence to Risa D. Sargent.

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Communicated by Alice Winn.

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Da Silva, E.M., King, V.M., Russell-Mercier, J.L. et al. Evidence for pollen limitation of a native plant in invaded communities. Oecologia 172, 469–476 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-012-2513-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-012-2513-7

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