Effects of fragmentation on pollinator abundance and fruit set of an abundant understory palm in a Mexican tropical forest

Abstract

Tropical forest fragmentation affects both biodiversity and plant reproductive success when small, isolated fragments sustain a reduced diversity or abundance of pollinators. Fragmentation-related effects have been poorly investigated in the case of palms, an important structural and functional component of tropical forests. We examined the relationships between fragment size and diversity and abundance of flower visitors, and palm reproduction, by quantifying the arthropod fauna associated to inflorescences of the palm Astrocaryum mexicanum, and its fruit set, in fragments of different size. The sample yielded a total of 228,772 arthropods (10 orders, 60 species). Coleoptera was the predominant group (⩾50% of the species), followed by Hymenoptera (20%), while the remaining (30%) was distributed among the other eight orders. We found a predominance of pollinating insects (Coleoptera-Nitidulidae), representing 85% of all visitors. Pollinator abundance was negatively affected by fragmentation, with a 4.2-fold average difference between small (<35 ha) and large (114–700 ha) fragments. However, fruit set was relatively high (⩾0.7) and not affected by fragmentation during three reproductive seasons. This could be explained because small fragments retained remarkably high numbers of pollinators (1191.4/inflorescence) and by the high abundance of palms (and flowers) in fragments. Further research is needed, however, to assess if fragmentation restricts pollinator movements to plants within the fragments, leading to a reduction in genetic variation of the progeny present in forest remnants.