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More than Moths: Flower Visitors of a Night-Blooming Plant in South Florida Pine Rocklands, USA

Plants whose flowers open at night but remain open during the day also attract diurnal flower visitors, potentially boosting their pollination rates and providing resources that can support diverse arthropod communities. The rough-leaf velvetseed, Guettarda scabra (Rubiaceae), is an evergreen shrub...

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Autores principales: Pimienta, María Cleopatra, Koptur, Suzanne
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9609400/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36297823
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11202799
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author Pimienta, María Cleopatra
Koptur, Suzanne
author_facet Pimienta, María Cleopatra
Koptur, Suzanne
author_sort Pimienta, María Cleopatra
collection PubMed
description Plants whose flowers open at night but remain open during the day also attract diurnal flower visitors, potentially boosting their pollination rates and providing resources that can support diverse arthropod communities. The rough-leaf velvetseed, Guettarda scabra (Rubiaceae), is an evergreen shrub that thrives only in the imperiled pine rockland habitat in south Florida. Its white, tubular, and fragrant flowers open during late afternoon, exhibiting traits strongly associated with the attraction of nocturnal hawkmoths (Sphingidae). Flowers of G. scabra remain open until the following morning, becoming available to a wider array of visitors, bringing into question the expectation that sphingophilous flowers are visited mainly by hawkmoths. To evaluate whether the flowers of G. scabra are mainly visited by nocturnal hawkmoths and understand the role of this plant in the pine rockland habitat, we characterized the arthropod fauna associated with its flowers during the morning, evening, and at night. We found that most flower visitors were diurnal insects of the orders Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera, although we observed other arthropod groups too. Visitation at night was dominated by two species of hawkmoths. Nectar was the main resource used by the arthropod community during this study. Legitimate visitation and nectar-robbing were the behaviors most frequently observed among the flower visitors. Our results suggest that flowers of the night-blooming G. scabra constitute an important food source for both diurnal and nocturnal arthropod fauna in the fire-dependent pine rocklands of southern Florida. Our study provides novel data to support efforts to conserve and protect pine rocklands and the plants and animals that inhabit them.
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spelling pubmed-96094002022-10-28 More than Moths: Flower Visitors of a Night-Blooming Plant in South Florida Pine Rocklands, USA Pimienta, María Cleopatra Koptur, Suzanne Plants (Basel) Article Plants whose flowers open at night but remain open during the day also attract diurnal flower visitors, potentially boosting their pollination rates and providing resources that can support diverse arthropod communities. The rough-leaf velvetseed, Guettarda scabra (Rubiaceae), is an evergreen shrub that thrives only in the imperiled pine rockland habitat in south Florida. Its white, tubular, and fragrant flowers open during late afternoon, exhibiting traits strongly associated with the attraction of nocturnal hawkmoths (Sphingidae). Flowers of G. scabra remain open until the following morning, becoming available to a wider array of visitors, bringing into question the expectation that sphingophilous flowers are visited mainly by hawkmoths. To evaluate whether the flowers of G. scabra are mainly visited by nocturnal hawkmoths and understand the role of this plant in the pine rockland habitat, we characterized the arthropod fauna associated with its flowers during the morning, evening, and at night. We found that most flower visitors were diurnal insects of the orders Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera, although we observed other arthropod groups too. Visitation at night was dominated by two species of hawkmoths. Nectar was the main resource used by the arthropod community during this study. Legitimate visitation and nectar-robbing were the behaviors most frequently observed among the flower visitors. Our results suggest that flowers of the night-blooming G. scabra constitute an important food source for both diurnal and nocturnal arthropod fauna in the fire-dependent pine rocklands of southern Florida. Our study provides novel data to support efforts to conserve and protect pine rocklands and the plants and animals that inhabit them. MDPI 2022-10-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9609400/ /pubmed/36297823 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11202799 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Pimienta, María Cleopatra
Koptur, Suzanne
More than Moths: Flower Visitors of a Night-Blooming Plant in South Florida Pine Rocklands, USA
title More than Moths: Flower Visitors of a Night-Blooming Plant in South Florida Pine Rocklands, USA
title_full More than Moths: Flower Visitors of a Night-Blooming Plant in South Florida Pine Rocklands, USA
title_fullStr More than Moths: Flower Visitors of a Night-Blooming Plant in South Florida Pine Rocklands, USA
title_full_unstemmed More than Moths: Flower Visitors of a Night-Blooming Plant in South Florida Pine Rocklands, USA
title_short More than Moths: Flower Visitors of a Night-Blooming Plant in South Florida Pine Rocklands, USA
title_sort more than moths: flower visitors of a night-blooming plant in south florida pine rocklands, usa
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9609400/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36297823
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/plants11202799
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