Data from: Floral colours in a world without birds and bees: the plants of Macquarie Island

We studied biotically pollinated angiosperms on Macquarie Island, a remote site in the Southern Ocean with a predominately or exclusively dipteran pollinator fauna, in an effort to understand how flower colour affects community assembly. We compared a distinctive group of cream-green Macquarie Island flowers to the flora of likely source pools of immigrants and to a continental flora from a high latitude in the northern hemisphere. We used both dipteran and hymenopteran colour models and phylogenetically informed analyses to explore the chromatic component of community assembly. The species with cream-green flowers are very restricted in colour space models of both fly vision and bee vision and represent a distinct group that plays a very minor role in other communities. It is unlikely that such a community could form through random immigration from continental source pools. Our findings suggest that fly pollination has imposed a strong ecological filter on Macquarie Island, favouring floral colours that are rare in continental floras. This is one of the strongest demonstrations that plant–pollinator interactions play an important role in plant community assembly. Future work exploring colour choices by dipteran flower visitors would be valuable.

本研究以位于南大洋的偏远岛屿麦夸里岛（Macquarie Island）为研究地点，该岛的传粉者类群几乎完全由双翅目（Diptera）昆虫构成，或仅存双翅目传粉者，旨在探明花色如何影响植物群落构建。我们将麦夸里岛上一类独特的乳绿色花植物，与潜在迁入种的源区植物区系以及北半球高纬度大陆的植物区系进行了对比。本研究同时采用双翅目与膜翅目（Hymenoptera）色彩模型，以及系统发育关联分析方法，探究群落构建的色彩组分。结果显示，拥有乳绿色花的物种在蝇类与蜂类视觉的色彩空间模型中分布范围极为局限，且构成了一个独特的类群——这类群在其他植物群落中占比极低。此类群落不太可能通过从大陆源区随机迁入而形成。本研究结果表明，蝇类传粉对麦夸里岛的植物群落施加了极强的生态过滤作用，偏好那些在大陆植物区系中较为罕见的花色。本研究为“植物-传粉者互作在植物群落构建中发挥关键作用”这一科学论断提供了迄今最有力的实证之一。未来针对双翅目访花昆虫的花色选择偏好展开相关研究，将具有重要的学术价值。