From a paper in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Invasive rats and recent colonist birds partially compensate for the loss of endemic New Zealand pollinators
In this study they show that animals such as the highly destructive ship rat can become an important
part of the ecosystem in the absence of native pollinators, many of
which perish precisely because of animals such as the highly destructive
ship rat!
Reported declines of pollinator populations around the world have led to
increasing concerns about the consequences for pollination
as a critical ecosystem function and service.
Pollination could be maintained through compensation if remaining
pollinators
increase their contribution or if novel species are
recruited as pollinators, but empirical evidence of this compensation
is so far lacking. Using a natural experiment in
New Zealand where endemic vertebrate pollinators still occur on one
offshore
island reserve despite their local extinction on
the adjacent North Island, we investigated whether compensation could
maintain
pollination in the face of pollinator extinctions.
We show that two recently arrived species in New Zealand, the invasive
ship rat (Rattus rattus) and the recent colonist silvereye (Zosterops lateralis;
a passerine bird), at least partly maintain pollination for three
forest plant species in northern New Zealand, and without
this compensation, these plants would be
significantly more pollen-limited. This study provides empirical
evidence that widespread
non-native species can play an important role in
maintaining ecosystem functions, a role that needs to be assessed when
planning
invasive species control or eradication programmes.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
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