DNA metabarcoding unveils the effects of habitat fragmentation on
pollinator diversity, plant-pollinator interactions, and pollination
efficiency in tropical islands
Abstract
Habitat fragmentation is known to affect biodiversity, but the impact on
pollinators and their interactions with plants is still unclear in
anthropized landscapes. Islands are open-air laboratories for ecological
studies with simplified communities and interactions, suitable to
disentangle how land-use alteration impacts pollination ecology and its
ecosystem service. Here, we used Maldives islands as model systems to
investigate how pollinator richness, their mutualistic interactions with
plants, and pollination efficiency are shaped by the degree of green
area fragmentation (i.e., gardens, parks and semi-natural green covered
patches), by considering both community- and species-level responses. To
do this, we surveyed pollinators from 11 islands showing a gradient of
green area fragmentation. In order to characterize the interactions
between plants and pollinators and obtain a novel and comprehensive view
of the key ecological dynamics, a DNA metabarcoding approach was adopted
to identify the pollen carried by pollinators. We found that green area
fragmentation at intermediate levels played positive effects on
pollinator richness. However, fragmentation decreased interaction
network complexity. Intriguingly, body size mediated the effect of
landscape alteration on plant-pollinator interactions, as only the
largest bee species expanded the foraging breath in terms of transported
pollen richness at increasing fragmentation. In parallel, the
pollination efficiency increased with pollinator species richness in two
sentinel plants. This study shows that moderate landscape fragmentation
of green areas shapes the ecosystem service of pollination, where in
spite of interactions being less complex and mediated by pollinator body
size, pollinator biodiversity and potential plant reproduction are
supported.