Dwindling habitats and plummeting partnerships
Habitat loss poses a major threat to biodiversity, affecting species interactions, such as those between plants and their pollinators. This poses greater threats for self-incompatible plants which rely on pollinators to reproduce and sustain their populations. Sílvia Castro and João Loureiro (member of COST Action CA18201: ConservePlants), in collaboration with other researchers, have studied and evaluated how habitat loss affects the pollination system, individual plant-pollinator species interaction networks, and plant reproductive fitness of a threatened, self-incompatible dune species: Jasione maritima var. sabularia. While this species is visited by over 100 different pollinator species, this has since been reduced as a result of habitat loss, leading to a decline in the species’ ability to reproduce (reproductive fitness). While the number of visits to individual plants was not affected, the persistence of the plant population may be compromised due to a reduction in pollen quality affected by the genetic structure of the separate habitat populations. In the Maltese Islands, sand dunes are one of the rarest and most vulnerable habitats. While this is primarily due to the...