Home » Plant biotic interactions and fitness in habitat edges

Plant biotic interactions and fitness in habitat edges

Hermaphrodite flowers of Dianthus balbisii before (on the left) and after (on the right) hand-cross pollination (photo by D. Gargano).

Habitat variations influence the richness and composition of insect guilds. This affects plant reproduction, which depends upon functional relationships with insects involving both pollination and predation. The impact of changes in insect fauna can be seen in composite landscapes, where forest fragmentation produces transition habitats showing great heterogeneity over small spatial scales. In a recent study published in AoB PLANTS, Gargano et al. investigated herbivory and pollination in an edge-specialist carnation over a forest–open habitat gradient. Visiting insects varied over the gradient, affecting herbivory and pollination rates, and offspring quality and quantity. Their findings emphasize the role of plant–insect interactions in tuning plant fitness in edge habitats, and provide guidelines for managing such ecological contexts.

AoBPLANTS

AoB PLANTS is an open-access, online journal that publishes peer-reviewed articles on all aspects of environmental and evolutionary biology. Published by Oxford University Press, AoB PLANTS provides a fast-track pathway for publishing high-quality research, where papers are available online to anyone, anywhere free of charge. Reasons to publish in AoB PLANTS include double-blind peer review of manuscripts, rapid processing time and low open-access charges.

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