Abstract
Cliff sides are extreme habitats, often sheltering a rich and unique flora. One example is the dioecious herb Borderea chouardii (Dioscoreaceae), which is a Tertiary, tropical relict, occurring only on two adjacent vertical cliffs in the world. We studied its reproductive biology, which in some aspects is extreme, especially the unusual double mutualistic role of ants as both pollinators and dispersers. We made a 2-year pollination census and four years of seed-dispersal experiments, recording flower visitors and dispersal rates. Fruit and seed set, self-sowing of seeds, seedling recruitment, and fate of seedlings from seeds sowed by different agents were scored over a period of 17 years. The ants Lasius grandis and L. cinereus were the main pollinators, whereas another ant Pheidole pallidula dispersed seeds. Thus ants functioned as double mutualists. Two thirds of all new seedlings came from self-sown seeds, and 1/3 was dispersed by ants, which gathered the seeds with their oil-rich elaiosome. Gravity played a minor role to dispersal. Both ant dispersal and self-sowing resulted in the same survival rate of seedlings. A double mutualism is a risky reproductive strategy, but B. chouardii buffers that by an unusual long–term demographic stability (some individuals exceed 300 years in lifespan) and its presence in a climatically very stable habitat, inaccessible to large herbivores. Such a combination of traits and habitat properties may explain the persistence of this relict species.
Highlights
Ants are ubiquitous in nature, playing key ecological roles, in tropical and temperate ecosystems [1], and in harsh environments like deserts and alpine habitats [2]
In the wind–pollination experiment, no B. chouardii pollen at all were found on any microscopic slide (N = 10 slides)
In spite of many hours of observation of flowers, only three species of ants (Lasius grandis, L. cinereus, and Camponotus cruentatus) were observed as visitors attracted by the nectar, besides a few collembolas and parasitic hymenopterans
Summary
Ants are ubiquitous in nature, playing key ecological roles, in tropical and temperate ecosystems [1], and in harsh environments like deserts and alpine habitats [2]. Two of their ecosystem functions are pollination and seed dispersal. Several reports demonstrate the importance of ants as pollinators, e.g. in a population of an alpine plant, Gomez and Zamora [5] showed that one of the flower–visiting ant species enhanced plant female fitness more than all the 39 winged insect visitor species together. Ant pollination may be most common where abiotic conditions for flying insects are adverse, e.g. in mountains and deserts [2,5,7,8]
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