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The cobblers stick to their lasts: pollinators prefer native over alien plant species in a multi-species experiment

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Abstract

The majority of plant species rely, at least partly, on animals for pollination. Our knowledge on whether pollinator visitation differs between native and alien plant species, and between invasive and non-invasive alien species is still limited. Additionally, because numerous invasive plant species are escapees from horticulture, the transition from human-assisted occurrence in urbanized habitats to unassisted persistence and spread in (semi-)natural habitats requires study. To address whether pollinator visitation differs between native, invasive alien and non-invasive alien species, we did pollinator observations for a total of 17 plant species representing five plant families. To test whether pollinator visitation to the three groups of species during the initial stage of invasion depends on habitat type, we did the study in three urbanized habitats and three semi-natural grasslands, using single potted plants. Native plants had more but smaller flower units than alien plants, and invasive alien plants had more but smaller flowers than non-invasive alien plants. After accounting for these differences in floral display, pollinator visitation was higher for native than for alien plant species, but did not differ between invasive and non-invasive alien plant species. Pollinator visitation was on average higher in semi-natural than in urbanized habitats, irrespective of origin or status of the plant species. This might suggest that once an alien species has managed to escape from urbanized into more natural habitats, pollinator limitation will not be a major barrier to establishment and invasion.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Eva Knop for advice on pollinator observations, the land-owners for allowing us to use their meadows, three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on a previous version, and the Plant Ecology Group of the University of Bern for valuable discussion. We gratefully acknowledge financial support by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), Grant No. 31003A-117722, the German Science Foundation (DFG), Grant No. KL 1866/3-1, and the European Union FP7 collaborative project STEP (Status and Trends of European Pollinators).

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  1. Thomas Chrobock

    Present address: Carl Zeiss Naturzentrum Amrum, Strunwai 31, 25946, Norddorf auf Amrum, Germany

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Plant Sciences, University of Bern, Altenbergrain 21, 3013, Bern, Switzerland

    Thomas Chrobock, Pius Winiger & Markus Fischer

  2. Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research, Zähringerstrasse 25, 3012, Bern, Switzerland

    Thomas Chrobock & Markus Fischer

  3. Botanical Garden of the University of Bern, Altenbergrain 21, 3013, Bern, Switzerland

    Markus Fischer

  4. Ecology, Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Universtätsstrasse 10, 78457, Konstanz, Germany

    Mark van Kleunen

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Correspondence to Thomas Chrobock.

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Chrobock, T., Winiger, P., Fischer, M. et al. The cobblers stick to their lasts: pollinators prefer native over alien plant species in a multi-species experiment. Biol Invasions 15, 2577–2588 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-013-0474-3

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