A geographical perspective on the relationship between Impatiens spur lengths and bill lengths of sunbirds in Afrotropical mountains

Trait matching-a correlation between the morphology of plants and their pollinators-has been frequently observed in pollination interactions. Different intensities of natural selection in individual regions should cause such correlations to be observable across different local assemblages. In this study, we focused on matching between spur lengths of the genus Impatiens and bill lengths of sunbirds in tropical Africa. For 25 mountain and island locations, we compiled information about the composition and traits of local Impatiens and sunbird assemblages. We found that assemblage mean and maximum values of bill lengths were positively correlated with mean and maximum spur lengths across locations. Moreover, our results suggest that the positive correlations hold only for forest sunbird assemblages sharing the same habitat with Impatiens species. We further show that long-billed sunbirds seem to locally match the morphology of multiple Impatiens plant species, not vice versa. Our observation implies that trait matching significantly contributes to structuring of Impatiens-sunbird pollination systems. We suggest that special habitat preferences together with spatial isolation of mountain environment might play a role in this case.

Automated summary

Trait matching, such as between plant morphology and pollinator traits, can be observed in pollination interactions due to different intensities of natural selection in various regions. Positive correlations were found between spur lengths of Impatiens plants and bill lengths of sunbirds across different locations, particularly in forest sunbird assemblages sharing the same habitat with Impatiens species. Long-billed sunbirds seem to locally match the morphology of multiple Impatiens plant species, indicating the significance of trait matching in structuring Impatiens-sunbird pollination systems.