Floral phenology of an Andean bellflower and pollination by Buff-tailed Sicklebill

AbstractThe Andean bellflowers comprise an explosive radiation correlated with shifts to specialized pollination. One diverse clade has evolved with extremely curved floral tubes and are predicted to be pollinated exclusively by one of two parapatric species of Sicklebill hummingbirds (Eutoxeres). In this study we focused on the floral biology of Centropogon granulosus, a bellflower thought to be specialized for pollination by E. condamini, in a montane cloud forest site in southeastern Peru. Using camera traps and a pollination exclusion experiment, we documented E. condamini as the sole pollinator of C.granulosus. Visitation by E. condamini was necessary for fruit development. Flowering rates were unequivocally linear and conformed to the ‘steady state’ phenological type. Over the course of >1800 hours of monitoring we recorded 12 E. condamini visits totaling 42 seconds, indicating traplining behaviour. As predicted by its curved flowers, C. granulosus is exclusively pollinated by Buff-tailed Sicklebill within our study area. We present evidence for the congruence of phenology and visitation as a driver of specialization in this highly diverse clade of Andean bellflowers., MethodsThis data was collected at the Cock-of-the-Rock Lodge situated at ~1350 m a.s.l. in the Kosñipata Valley, Department of Cusco, Peru (-13.055, -71.548 DD). Data in the 'raw_data' folder is not processed, and was used as-is in the analysis. Please refer to the accompanying publication for a detailed description of the methods used to collect this data., Usage notesThis dataset was analysed via R scripts in the accompanying Zenodo repository. To run the .R files, we recommend first opening the .RProj file in RStudio and installing the package `here`. This will allow you to run all of the .R scripts without changing any of the working directories.