The rôle of unspecialized pollinators in the reproductive success of Aldabran plants

Abstract
Plants dispersed to remote islands may leave their usual pollinators behind. They are faced with extinction, inbreeding, or acceptance of other pollen vectors, possibly of the ‘generalist’ type. There are few specialized pollinator-plant relations on Aldabra. Two species, the sunbird Nectarinia sovimanga and the cetoniid beetle Mausoleopsis aldabrensis , visit many plant species. The latter was observed visiting flowers of 58 % of those species observed in flower on Aldabra in early 1974. It was apparently indifferent to distributional origin of the species, flower colour, flower morphology or whether the plants were native or introduced. It exhibited a high degree of constancy to a plant species in a foraging flight. The parallels between this beetle and the carpenter bee Xylocopa darwinii on the Galápagos Islands are pointed out. The importance of such a generalist pollinator to the chances of establishment of new immigrants to islands, and to the breeding systems of island plants in general, are discussed.

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