Increasing pollen production at high latitudes across animal-pollinated flowering plants

Aim: Plant reliance on animal mutualists is expected to decrease with latitude owing to increasing environmental instability. As a consequence, more erratic animal pollination in the temperate zones than in the tropics could translate into lower efficiency in pollen transfer, and thus increasing pollen wastage. Despite the relevance of this hypothesis for plant reproductive evolution, the implications of a proposed latitudinal gradient in pollinator reliability for pollen and ovule production, traits directly affecting seed siring and seed set, respectively, remain unresolved.

Location: Global.

Time period:1971-2020.

Major taxa studied: Angiospermae.

Methods: Based on a bibliographic survey and our own data, we collated a dataset with information on pollen production (P) and ovule number (O) per flower from 419 studies, including a total of 1392 animal-pollinated angiosperm species from 141 families distributed worldwide and sampled between the equator and 68.35o latitude. ...

目的：由于环境不稳定性加剧，植物对动物互利共生者的依赖程度预计会随纬度升高而降低。因此，温带地区比热带地区更不稳定的动物传粉可能导致花粉传递效率降低，进而增加花粉浪费。尽管这一假说对植物繁殖进化具有重要意义，但传粉者可靠性的纬度梯度假说对花粉和胚珠产量（分别直接影响种子父本成功率和结实率的性状）的影响尚未得到解决。

地点：全球。

时间段：1971-2020年。

主要研究类群：被子植物（Angiospermae）。

方法：基于文献调查和自有数据，我们整理了一个数据集，包含来自419项研究的单花花粉产量（P）和胚珠数量（O）信息，涉及全球分布的141科1392种动物传粉被子植物，采样范围介于赤道至68.35°纬度之间。