A new publication has been released by our SAFEGUARD colleagues at the Centre for Ecological Research.

Viktor Szigeti*, Annamária Fenesi, Zoltán Botta-Dukát, Michael Kuhlmann, Simon G. Potts, Stuart Roberts, Zoltán Soltész, Edina Török, Anikó Kovács-Hostyánszki

“Invasion of the traits” – The effect of invasion on pollinator communities

Invasive plant species have a negative effect also on the local fauna, such as pollinating insects, due to the transformation of vegetation and domination of the floral resources.

This study investigated the effect of ten different herbaceous invasive plant species on the functional traits of pollinating insects.

The results suggest that plant invasion has no general effect, the trait-based effects are different among the investigated invasive plant species.

However, researchers found an interesting relation between the size of invasive’ flowers and the size of wild bees: two invasive plant species with deep flowers attracted more long- tongued bees with  larger body size, whereas in case of an invasive species with shallow flowers there were more smaller bees in the pollinator communities in the invaded sites.  This suggests a strong size limitation between flowers and their pollinators, meaning that the traits of invasive plants influence the trait-sets of the surviving insect community in the invaded  habitats; due to e.g. the long-tongued pollinators are able to feed from the plants with deep flowers.

Read the full article HERE.