PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #6: Conservation Ecology.
Monday, August 6, 2001. Presentation from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM. Exhibition Hall

Habitat corridors and the conservation of plant-pollinator interactions.

Townsend, Patricia¹, Levey, Doug¹, ¹

ABSTRACT- A central tenet in conservation biology is that the effects of fragmentation can be diminished if habitat fragments are joined by a corridor, a strip of habitat connecting two or more patches of the same habitat. The key assumption behind this belief is that corridors increase movement rates of organisms between otherwise isolated fragments. This movement may be especially important for maintaining viable populations of insect-pollinated plants in fragmented landscapes. I tested the hypothesis that corridors increase pollen transfer of Lantana camara between habitat fragments. The hypothesis was tested in a large-scale experiment in which 40 one ha fragments of early successional habitat were created in a matrix of pine forest. Some of the fragments were connected to another by a corridor, and others were not connected. Fluorescent powder was used to track pollen transfer by butterflies in the fragments. In connected fragments 55% of the flowers received pollen from another fragment while in unconnected fragments only 25% of the flowers received pollen from another fragment (p<0.0001). These results suggest that corridors may be important to maintaining plant populations in fragmented landscapes.

KEY WORDS: habitat corridors, fragmentation, pollination