Generalization on Both Sides of a Mutualism: Pollinators of <i>Jacquemontia curtisii</i> in Southern Florida
2025
Suzanne Koptur
<i>Jacquemontia curtisii</i> Peter ex Hallier f. is common in the pine rocklands of the southern part of peninsular Florida, with its white star-shaped flowers open to visits from many species of arthropods. Its flowers are visited by a wide array of insects, especially Hymenoptera and Lepidoptera. To determine if any of these flower visitors are specialized to <i>J. curtisii</i>, we observed visitors to the flowers of this species, catching visitors and sampling the pollen from their bodies. We examined stigmas of <i>J. curtisii</i> from 12 different sites to see how many plant species’ pollen was found and the size of the pollen loads. Though it seemed like many insects were visiting <i>J. curtisii</i> exclusively when it was in bloom, a surprising number had pollen of two or more other co-occurring plant species, indicating that the flower-visiting bees were generalists, as were the flowers of <i>Jacquemontia curtisii</i>. We compared the list of flower visitors with those observed at two previously studied southern Florida <i>Jacquemontia</i> species, <i>J. pentanthos</i> (Jacq.) G. Don and <i>J. reclinata</i> House ex Small, and compared pollen/ovule ratios of the three species, making predictions about the breeding systems of <i>J. curtisii</i> and <i>J. pentanthos</i>, as their P/Os are larger than those of <i>J. reclinata</i>, which was shown previously to be mostly self-incompatible.
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