In tropical forests and cool meadows, flowers have relied on the same partners for centuries — bees, butterflies or birds. But a new study shows that it is not geographic location but temperature and precipitation that decide how narrow these relationships will be.
An international team of 142 scientists from 32 countries analyzed 3415 plant–pollinator interaction networks. The data covered more than 110 thousand contacts between 5343 pollinator species and 6126 plant species. The results are published in Nature Ecology & Evolution and refute the previous notion that specialization is always higher in the tropics.
Instead of latitude, the key factors turned out to be mean annual temperature and precipitation patterns. In regions with a stable warm climate and abundant rain, relationships often prove to be more specialized, whereas in zones with sharp temperature swings or uneven precipitation, plants and pollinators more often "switch" to different partners.
Southern Africa, according to Professor Michael Lattorff of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, remains poorly represented in global databases. Local patterns of precipitation and seasonality may yield different pictures than in Europe or North America. At the same time, it is precisely here that climate shifts, habitat loss and uncontrolled pesticide use are already changing the familiar encounters between flowers and their pollinators.
When familiar partners stop coinciding in timing of flowering or availability, species that depend on a narrow circle of helpers find themselves under the greatest threat. This directly affects harvests of fruits, vegetables, nuts and spices — those crops that depend on animal pollination.
The practical steps are simple and accessible to everyone: preserve islands of natural vegetation, plant diverse flowering plants, including native ones, and reduce the use of harmful chemicals. Such measures help pollinators find food and shelter even under a changing climate.
To protect these ancient alliances, it is necessary to invest in local research — it is precisely such research that will show how exactly warming and changing rainfall patterns will reshape the encounters of plants and pollinators in each region.
