Format: ORAL

Zong-Xin Ren1, Hong Wang1

1 Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Mountain ecosystems are natural labs for species evolution providing natural experiments awaiting us to explore. Alpine environments at high mountains are sensitive to environmental changes, plants and their pollinators as well as their interactions at mountain regions are threatened under the current global change and human disturbance situation. Changes of the composition of plants and pollinators at different spatial and temporal scales will reshape the pollination networks, eventually influence ecosystem function and stability. Currently, the topology and structure of pollination on the mountain ecosystem were not fully explored and the spatial and temporal pattern along elevation and factors determining network structures are not fully understood. We selected several typical elevation gradients on the Hengduan Mountain region in southwestern China to study pollination networks by investigating their topologies, structuring mechanisms and spatial-temporal dynamics. We investigated how ecological and historical factors, including functional traits of plants and pollinators, phylogenetic history and environmental factors influence of structure of pollination networks. In this talk, we presented our key findings.1) Compared to other mountain ecosystems, the specialization of pollination networks in our communities was much lower, potentially due to the key roles of super generalists including bumblebees and honeybees. 2) Species abundance, functional trait and phylogenetical history strongly shaped network structures. The matching between insect tongue length and the floral tube/spur length determined the structure and stability of networks. The physical match between floral morph and insects were significantly varied among different insects groups and influenced by elevation. 3) Pollination networks showed a strong spatial and temporal variation. In conclusion, our studies uncover the uniqueness of pollination in the mountains of Southwestern China compared with other mountain ecosystem in the world providing new understanding of plant-pollinator interaction at alpine and subalpine regions.