Communities of flower visitors of Uvariopsis dioica (Annonaceae) in lowland forests of Mt. Cameroon, with notes on its potential pollinators
Abstract
Annonaceae are one of the basal angiosperm families (~90 Myr old; Massoni, Couvreur & Sauquet, 2015) representing a model for evolutionary studies of plantreproduction concepts such as pollen morphology (Doyle & le Thomas, 2012), breeding (Pang & Saunders, 2014) and pollination systems (Saunders, 2012). It consists of 2400-2500 described species in 108 genera (Couvreur et al., 2011; Chatrou et al., 2012); new species (e.g.
Couvreur & Niangadouma, 2016; Marshall et al., 2016) and even genera (Couvreur et al., 2015) are still being described. As cantharophily (beetle pollination) highly dominates the family (Gottsberger, 1999, 2012) including its early diverging genus Anaxagorea (Gottsberger, 2016), it is assumed to be the plesiomorphic pollination syndrome.
The most common pollinators are small beetles (Nitidulidae, Curculionidae, Staphylinidae and Chrysomelidae), whereas larger beetles (Scarabaeidae) pollinate a few plant species (Gottsberger, 2012).