Flowers of Amur honeysuckle, an invasive plant species in Eastern North America. |
Invasive
plants act like weeds, overtaking natural ecosystems. In addition to crowding out native plants,
invasive plants can also steal pollinators from them. Alternatively, the showy floral displays of
invasive plants have also been shown to attract pollinators that spill over
onto native plants, thus benefiting native plant pollination.
Here we created
artificial arrays of native and invasive flowers to test the idea that relative
floral densities may explain why invasive plants can have both negative and
positive effects on native plant pollination.
We studied the invasive plant Amur honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii) and the native plant wild geranium (Geranium maculatum).