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Niche Partitioning Between Hummingbirds and Well-matched Flowers Is Independent of Hummingbird Traits by Raquel de Oliveira Bueno; Thais Bastos Zanata; Isabela Galarda Varassin is a Environmental Science article available to read on EtoBox.

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## Abstract Among nectarivorous birds, the highest niche partitioning occurs between hummingbirds and plants. Although hummingbirds tend to visit morphologically well-matched resources, as ornithophilous species, they can also visit flowers with other traits. Here, we investigated whether the niche partitioning in hummingbird-plant interactions is also observed with ornithophilous species only. We also explored if hummingbird traits predicted resources use. We recorded a plant-ornithophilous species network in a semi-deciduous forest in Brazil. We quantified interaction partitioning through network connectance, complementary specialisation, and modularity. The influence of hummingbirds’ traits into their visits was investigated through methods of functional ecology and ecological networks. We recorded 948 interactions between nine hummingbirds and seven ornithophilous plants. We detected similar patterns of niche partitioning between hummingbirds and ornithophilous plants in comparison to networks considering the entire plant community. However, hummingbird species with the most specialised interactions are different from those when the whole system is evaluated. Therefore, we cann

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Author

Raquel de Oliveira Bueno; Thais Bastos Zanata; Isabela Galarda Varassin

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Published

2021

Language

EN

Field

Environmental Science (Physical Sciences)