Wind or insect pollination? Ambophily in a subtropical gymnosperm Gnetum parvifolium (Gnetales)

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• 作者：Yan-Bing Gong ; Min Yang ; Jana C. Vamosi ; Hong-Mei Yang ; Wei-Xue Mu ; Jiao-Kun Li and Tao Wan
• 刊名：Plant Species Biology
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：October 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：31
• 期：4
• 页码：272-279
• 全文大小：10800K
• ISSN：1442-1984

文摘

Gnetum (Gnetales) has long been regarded as insect pollinated due to its range-restricted distribution in tropical rain forests, where wind pollination is supposed to be detrimental. However, ubiquitous pollen limitation in the tropics might cause transition to anemophily, or even ambophily for reproductive assurance, especially for gymnosperms such as Gnetum, which exhibit various anemophilous syndromes, including absence of petals, greenish color of strobili, dioecy and uniovulate flowers. Pollination treatments applied to Gnetum parvifolium in southern China revealed this rare and endangered species to be pollen limited and incapable of apomixis. Pollen grains of G. parvifolium did not adhere to each other and could be trapped by interception traps near the male and female strobili. Seed set in the netted treatment (anemophily) was significantly higher than in the bagged treatment (apomixis) but lower than open pollination (anemophily and entomophily), indicating that both wind and biotic pollination contributed to seed production of G. parvifolium. The occurrence of ambophily in Gnetum and the prevalence of anemophily in Ehpedra and Welwitschia suggest that wind may also play a role in the pollination of the ancient Gnetales.