Abrahamczyk Stefan

• Researcher at State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart

Cherry laurel ( Prunus laurocerasus ) is a very popular garden plant and has been widely reported as a garden escape, for example, in Central Europe. We recorded flower visitors and consumers of fruits and conducted pollination experiments to improve our understanding of the degree of ecological integration of P. laurocerasus in the newly colonized...

The cherry laurel (Prunus laurocerasus) is a very popular garden plant and has been widely reported as a garden escape in Central Europe. However, it is still considered an unestablished neophyte in Germany. Few critical data are available on local population sizes, life history or reproductive biology outside its natural range. We carried out a st...

Plant–hummingbird interactions are considered a classic example of coevolution, a process in which mutually dependent species influence each other’s evolution. Plants depend on hummingbirds for pollination, whereas hummingbirds rely on nectar for food. As a step towards understanding coevolution, this review focuses on the macroevolutionary consequ...

The biodiversity impacts of agricultural deforestation vary widely across regions. Previous efforts to explain this variation have focused exclusively on the landscape features and management regimes of agricultural systems, neglecting the potentially critical role of ecological filtering in shaping deforestation tolerance of extant species assembl...

Most populations of the european pied flycatcher Ficedula hypoleuca are decreasing. Different reasons for the decline are discussed, including biotic interactions and climate change. It is evident that many studies have been conducted in populations depending completely on nest boxes, but the influence of this artificial support on population dynam...

Impatiens namchabarwensis was described as a new species in 2005 by Morgan et al. As already mentioned in the species description, I. namchabarwensis is morphologically similar to I. arguta and the small range of I. namchabarwensis in the eastern Himalaya is nested within the large, Himalayan range of I. arguta. Therefore, I. namchabarwensis has fr...

Reproductive systems and pollination modes (pollination by animals vs. wind) can switch within clades, and many species with an intermediate pollination mode (ambophily, pollination by animals and wind) exist. Here, we investigate the reproductive systems and pollination modes of two common Eurasian species from the Agrimonieae (Rosaceae) that occu...

Background and aims: The most species-rich and ecologically diverse plant radiation on the Canary Islands is the Aeonium alliance (Crassulaceae). In island radiations like this, speciation can take place either within islands or following dispersal between islands. Aiming at quantifying intra- and inter-island speciation events in the evolution of...

Ambophily, the mixed mode of wind and insect pollination is still poorly understood, even though it has been known to science for over 130 years. While its presence has been repeatedly inferred, experimental data remain regrettably rare. No specific suite of morphological or ecological characteristics has yet been identified for ambophilous plants...

Background Local floristic diversity has massively decreased during the twentieth century in Central Europe even though in the 1990s diversity began increasing again in several regions. However, little is known whether this increase is equally distributed among plant groups with different reproductive traits. Methods Our study is based on data of...

Hummingbird pollination evolved numerous times independently and has been reported from 404 plant genera distributed over 68 angiosperm families (Abrahamczyk and Kessler 2015). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Many hummingbird‐pollinated plant species evolved from bee‐pollinated ancestors independently in many different habitats in North and South America. The mechanisms leading to these transitions are not completely understood. We conducted pollination and germination experiments and analyzed additional reproductive traits in three sister species pairs...

In the species-rich genus Impatiens, few natural hybrids are known, even though closely related species often occur sympatrically. In this study, we aim to bridge the gap between micro- and macro-evolution to disentangle pre- and postzygotic mechanisms that may prevent hybridization in the Impatiens purpureoviolacea complex from Central Africa. We...

The Albertine Rift harbours a highly diverse flora with numerous endemic species. An important component of the forest understorey is the herbaceous genus Impatiens. Fieldwork in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda as well as morphological studies indicated that the Albertine Rift endemic Impatiens purpureoviolacea represents a...

In den letzten Jahrzehnten kam es zu massiven Veränderungen in der Zusammensetzung von Vogelgemeinschaften. Oft sterben Arten regional aus, die spezielle Ansprüche an ihre Lebensräume stellen. Generalisten dagegen profitieren und die Tier- oder Pflanzenwelt wird eintöniger und gleichförmiger. Für diese Entwicklung gibt es den Fachbegriff der biotis...

Capsule Long-term data on changes in avian diversity from urban habitats are essential to address the ongoing declines in European bird populations. Aims We aimed to analyse historical changes in the bird assemblage of an urban district of Bonn, Germany, over 50 years. Methods We surveyed the breeding bird population in a district of Bonn, German...

Self-incompatible, non-clonal plant species are especially dependent on the activity of flower visitors for seed production. Therefore, populations of these plants are vulnerable to a reduced flower visitation rates, but also to increased isolation by extinction of local populations. To study how local populations of Centaurea scabiosa , a self-inc...

Functional traits can determine pairwise species interactions, such as those between plants and pollinators. However, the effects of biogeography and evolutionary history on trait‐matching and trait‐mediated resource specialization remain poorly understood. We compiled a database of 93 mutualistic hummingbird–plant networks (including 181 hummingbi...

The species-rich flora of Madagascar is well known for a range of unusual floral ecologies. One example is Impatiens section Trimorphopetalum with its unique combination of floral traits: small, spur-less, cup- or lip-shaped, greenish or brownish flowers. So far no hypotheses on floral function or pollination of this peculiar group have been propos...

Adult flower‐visiting insects feed on nectar and pollen and partly collect floral resources to feed their larvae. The reduction in food availability has therefore been proposed as one of the main causes for the drastic decline in flower‐visiting insects in Central Europe. We compared the current (2012–2017) abundances of food plants of different gr...

At least half of the 3600 species of Bromeliaceae are pollinated by hummingbirds. There is little doubt that the four to 12 evolutionary shifts towards and c. 32 shifts away from hummingbird pollination opened new evolutionary spaces for bromeliad diversification, and that hummingbird pollination has led to increased bromeliad diversification rates...

Different pollination modes have been reported from the genus Plantago, including cleistogamy, autogamy, ambophily and anemophily. However, these categories are no fixed units, but broad overlap exists between them. For several widely distributed P. species rigorous tests of the pollination mode are missing. Therefore, we analysed six floral traits...

At least half of the 3600 species of Bromeliaceae are pollinated by hummingbirds. There is little doubt that the four to 12 evolutionary shifts towards and c. 32 shifts away from hummingbird pollination opened new evolutionary spaces for bromeliad diversification, and that hummingbird pollination has led to increased bromeliad diversification rates...

Aim: To disentangle the influence of environmental factors at different spatial grains (regional and local) on fern and lycophyte species richness and ask how regional and plot-level richness are related to each other. Location: Global. Time period: Present. Major Taxa studied: Ferns and lycophytes. Methods: We explored fern and lycophyte species r...

Background and aims: The attractiveness of nectar rewards depends both on the quantity of nectar produced and on its chemical composition. It is known that nectar quantity and chemical composition can differ in plant species depending on the main pollinator associated with the species. The main aims of this study were to test formally whether nect...

Thousands of plant species worldwide are dependent on birds for pollination. While the ecology and evolution of interactions between specialist nectarivorous birds and the plants they pollinate is relatively well understood, very little is known on pollination by generalist birds. The flower characters of this pollination syndrome are clearly defin...

Research rationale Pollen/ovule (P/O) ratios are often used as proxy for breeding systems. Here, we investigate the relations between breeding systems and P/O ratios, pollination syndromes, life history and climate zone in Balsaminaceae. Methods We conducted controlled breeding system experiments (autonomous and active self‐pollination and outcros...

Pollination syndromes and their predictive power regarding actual plant-animal interactions have been controversially discussed in the past. We investigate pollination syndromes in Balsaminaceae, utilizing quantitative respectively categorical data sets of flower morphometry, signal and reward traits for 86 species to test for the effect of differe...

Clustering received from multiscale bootstrap resampling. Numbers represent bootstrap support of the backbone only. Colors represent pollination syndromes. (DOC)

Kruskal-Wallis tests for multiple comparisons of several flower morphometry, signal and rewards traits between different pollination syndromes defined by the cluster analysis. Note that Large bee 1 (= Impatiens glandulifera) and Moth (= I. sodenii) was not included into the analyses due to too small sampling sizes. (DOC)

Definitions for the categorisation of the flower morphometry, signal and reward traits. (DOC)

Pollinator observations in the natural habitat for the studied Balsaminaceae species. (DOC)

Results of the Spearman correlation analyses between flower morphometry, signal and reward traits. (DOC)

Analysed species with accession and herbarium numbers–these numbers are identical since we took herbarium specimen only from accessions of the Botanical Gardens Bonn—as well as morphometry and reward traits. Note that the large number of unidentified Impatiens species is due to the large number of undescribed species in this genus (pers. obs. E. Fi...

Aim: Among the world’s three major nectar-feeding bird taxa, hummingbirds are the most phenotypically specialized for nectarivory, followed by sunbirds, while the honeyeaters are the least phenotypically specialized taxa. We tested whether this phenotypic specialization gradient is also found in the interaction patterns with their floral resources....

Impatiens galactica, a new species from lowland rainforest in Marojejy National Park, NE Madagascar, is described and illustrated. It belongs to Impatiens section Trimorphopetalum and is related to I. messmerae, also known from Mt. Marojejy. Impatiens galactica differs from the latter species in the shape of the lateral sepals, and in the dorsal pe...

Aim Partners in co‐evolutionary interactions must be ecologically interdependent and at least at some stage have matching traits and more or less overlapping ranges. As co‐evolution is a process, neither the mutual dependence nor the trait and range matching are expected to be static or perfect. Here we investigate the extent of evolutionary flexib...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

Figure S1: Database schema. Diversity data in yellow, GIS data in green and Catalogue of Life data in blue. The diversity tables datasource, study, site, measuredtaxon and diversitymeasurement follow the structure described in ‘Methods’ in the main text and in Hudson et al. (2014): a datasource is associated with one or more study records, each of...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

The PREDICTS project—Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems (www.predicts.org.uk)—has collated from published studies a large, reasonably representative database of comparable samples of biodiversity from multiple sites that differ in the nature or intensity of human impacts relating to land use. We have used t...

A longstanding debate concerns whether nectar sugar composition evolves as an adaptation to pollinator dietary requirements or whether it is ‘phylogenetically constrained’. Here we use a modeling approach to evaluate the hypothesis that nectar sucrose proportion (NSP) is an adaptation to pollinators. We analyze ~2,100 species of asterids, spanning...

Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Euro...

Springkräuter (Impatiens) zeichnen sich durch eine große Vielfalt an Blütenformen, -farben und -mustern aus. Dies macht sie zunehmend attraktiv für Pflanzenfreunde. Daher ist seit einiger Zeit in Spezialgärtnereien auch eine wachsende Anzahl an Springkraut-Arten zu finden. Über die Kultivierung und Vermehrung dieser zum Teil sehr anspruchsvollen Ar...

It is well known that ecosystem functioning is positively influenced by biodiversity. Most biodiversity–ecosystem functioning experiments have measured biodiversity based on species richness or phylogenetic relationships. However, theoretical and empirical evidence suggests that ecosystem functioning should be more closely related to functional div...

A new species, Impatiens pinganoensisis described from northern angola. It belongs to the Impatiens filicornucomplex and is closely related to I. filicornufrom western central africa, but differs in the decurrent petiole base, developing into cork ridges at older stems, its flower shape, i.e. the upper lateral petals laterally overtopping the lower...

Managing ecosystems for carbon storage may also benefit biodiversity conservation, but such a potential 'win-win' scenario has not yet been assessed for tropical agroforestry landscapes. We measured above-and below-ground carbon stocks as well as the species richness of four groups of plants and eight of animals on 14 representative plots in Sulawe...

Autogamous species are usually distinguishable from xenogamous relatives by smaller flowers, fewer or even no floral rewards and lower pollen–ovule (P/O) ratios. Many Rhipsalis spp. are small flowered, selfing and include the most widespread species in Cactaceae. However, Rhipsalis also includes a large number of narrowly endemic species and is mos...

Ecological communities that experience stable climate conditions have been speculated to preserve more specialized interspecific associations and have higher proportions of smaller ranged species (SRS). Thus, areas with disproportionally large numbers of SRS are expected to coincide geographically with a high degree of community-level ecological sp...

p>Land-use change and intensification threaten bee populations worldwide, imperilling pollination services. Global models are needed to better characterise, project, and mitigate bees' responses to these human impacts. The available data are, however, geographically and taxonomically unrepresentative; most data are from North America and Western Eu...

The new species Impatiens elianae is described from cultivated plants said to have been collected in central Madagascar. It is part of the I. lyallii complex and closely related to I. trichoceras from eastern central Madagascar, but differs in having a glossy lamina with silvery part in the centre, linear extrafloral nectaries, 2-flowered infloresc...

Aim To investigate the association between hummingbird–plant network structure and species richness, phylogenetic signal on species' interaction pattern, insu-larity and historical and current climate. Location Fifty-four communities along a c. 10,000 km latitudinal gradient across the Americas (39° N–32° S), ranging from sea level to c. 3700 m a....

Hydrocera ist eine monotypische Gattung und Schwester zu den Springkräutern (Impatiens). Wir beschreiben ihren Ausbreitungsmechanismus und geben Hinweise für ihre Kultivierung und Vermehrung.

The 361 species of hummingbirds that occur from Alaska to Patagonia pollinate ~7,000 plant species with flowers morphologically adapted to them. To better understand this asymmetric diversity build-up, this study analyzes the origin of hummingbird/plant mutualisms in North America and temperate South America, based on new compilations of the 184 hu...

We investigated if an increase in species pool size leads to more pronounced turnover in local communities and assessed if this increase relates to stronger competition for environmental niches or to more random placement of species. We compared compositional turnover of pteridophytes (ferns and lycophytes) at 15 sites in mountain ecosystems on 13...

We analysed the geographical origins and divergence times of the West Indian hummingbirds, using a large clock-dated phylogeny that included 14 of the 15 West Indian species and statistical biogeographical reconstruction. We also compiled a list of 101 West Indian plant species with hummingbird-adapted flowers (90 of them endemic) and dated the mos...

Hummingbirds are the most specialised nectarivorous birds and show close ecological relationships to their food plants. Their small body size, bright colors, and unique behaviour have fascinated generations of naturalists. In this review, we investigate the morphological and behavioural adaptations of hummingbirds to feed on nectar and arthropods,...

Data S1. Data extract.

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeograph...

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeograph...

A striking example of plant/pollinator trait matching is found between Andean species of Passiflora with 6-14-cm-long nectar tubes and the sword-billed hummingbird, Ensifera ensifera, with up to 11-cm-long bills. Because of the position of their anthers and stigmas, and self-incompatibility, these passionflower species depend on E. ensifera for pol...

Question The mountains of NW N orth A merica are home to natural meadows that cover large areas at the timberline. The vegetation of these meadows has been the topic of few local studies, and little is known of species composition turnover across mountain ranges and along the latitudinal gradient. We sampled and analyzed community composition along...

Background: Biodiversity is perceived to decline from lowlands towards mountain peaks and away from the Equator towards the Poles, but supporting data for most groups of organisms are lacking, especially at the local scale. Aims: Elevational gradients of fern species richness in tropical forest habitats were analysed to test the hypotheses that fer...

Amazonian rainforests are among the most species-rich terrestrial habitats on Earth. The aim of this study was to analyze phylogenetic diversity (PD) patterns of orchid bee assemblages along a latitudinal gradient of 15° from northern Peru to central Bolivia and to relate them to climatic factors and geological history. We expanded an existing phyl...

Although tropical forests are renowned for their high plant diversity, to date there has been no global quantitative evaluation of the local species richness of terrestrial forest herbs in tropical forests. In this paper, richness and composition of terrestrial herb assemblages is compared in tropical forests of America, Africa and South East Asia....

Managing ecosystems for carbon storage may also benefit biodiversity conservation, but such a potential 'win-win' scenario has not yet been assessed for tropical agroforestry landscapes. We measured above- and below-ground carbon stocks as well as the species richness of four groups of plants and eight of animals on 14 representative plots in Sulaw...

Species richness in the study plots in relation to below-ground carbon stocks. Species richness of 12 groups of organisms in relation to below-ground (soil + root) carbon stocks in 14 plots of natural forest and cacao agroforests. Symbols as in Fig. S1. (TIF)

Species richness in the study plots in relation to above-ground carbon stocks. Species richness of 12 groups of organisms in relation to above-ground carbon stocks in 14 plots of natural forest and cacao agroforests. Symbols as in Fig. S1. (TIF)

Species richness of selected organisms in relation to total carbon stocks in the 14 plots. Species richness (number of species per plot) of 12 groups of organisms in relation to total carbon stocks in 14 plots of natural forest and cacao agroforests. Large black circles denote natural forest plots, small circles agroforests of varying tree density...

Species-rich tropical communities are expected to be more specialized than their temperate counterparts [1-3]. Several studies have reported increasing biotic specialization toward the tropics [4-7], whereas others have not found latitudinal trends once accounting for sampling bias [8, 9] or differences in plant diversity [10, 11]. Thus, the direct...

Orchid bees are an important group of specialized insect pollinators in the Neotropics. Male orchid bees are attracted by a wide range of aromatic substances often produced by flowers. Previous studies found that in some species the males change their aromatic preferences between seasons. In our study we documented seasonal changes of aromatic pref...

Tropical forests are known for their diverse insect fauna. We aimed to determine the effect and relative importance of latitude, elevation and climatic factors affecting species richness and turnover in euglossine bee assemblages along a gradient of 18°latitude from tropical rainforests to subtropical, deciduous dry forests in Peru and Bolivia. Six...

Strength of relation (R-values) between the individual number of bees and wasp and hummingbirds total against biotic and abiotic environmental factors during rainy (R) and dry season (D) and total; ^ p<0.1, * p≤0.05. (DOC)

Strength of relation (R-values) of linear regression analyses of the difference in species and individual numbers between seasons of the three pollinator groups and factors of climate and food seasonality; R = rainy season, D = dry season; ^ p<0.1, * p≤0.05. (DOC)

Strength of relation (R-values) for regression analysis between soil parameters and the number of pollinator group species and individuals of the different pollinator groups respectively number of food plant species and flowers during rainy (R) and dry season (D) and total; ^ p<0.1, * p≤0.05. (DOC)

Tropical South America is rich in different groups of pollinators, but the biotic and abiotic factors determining the geographical distribution of their species richness are poorly understood. We analyzed the species richness of three groups of pollinators (bees and wasps, butterflies, hummingbirds) in six tropical forests in the Bolivian lowlands...

1. Biodiversity data are needed for conservation and management of tropical habitats, but the high diversity of these ecosystems makes comprehensive surveys prohibitively expensive and indicator taxa reflecting the biodiversity patterns of other taxa are frequently used. Few studies have produced the necessary comprehensive data sets to assess the...

Measuring species richness of tropical insects is an important but considerable challenge. Several techniques have been developed to quantitatively sample the non-formicid Hymenoptera (bees and wasps). One of the most common is the use of colored pan traps. Although it is known that Hymenoptera are attracted differently by different colors, it is n...

As for many other taxa, hummingbird diversity declines away from the equator, but the causes for this decline are still disputed and might involve, among others, climatic factors or the availability of food resources. Because hummingbirds are one of the classical examples for plant–animal coevolution, it has been proposed that the diversity of humm...

Little is known about the distribution, ecology and behaviour of hummingbirds in the Andean foothills of Bolivia, where many lowland hummingbird species reach their south-western distributional limits. In November 2007 – October 2008, we surveyed hummingbirds at six sites along a 660-km transect, from tropical Amazonian humid forest to subtropical...

The need to capture primary production in order to sustain and improve economic livelihoods has lead to increasing conversion of natural habitat and intensification of agricultural practices in many parts of the world including most tropical regions. Understanding how these processes affect ecosystems and their functioning, in particular in the hig...

The need to capture primary production in order to sustain and improve economic livelihoods has lead to increasing conversion of natural habitat and intensification of agricultural practices in many parts of the world including most tropical regions. Understanding how these processes affect ecosystems and their functioning, in particular in the hig...