Ecology Letters, (2011) 14: 896–904 doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01654.x LETTER Linne´ Õs floral clock is slow without pollinators – flower closure and plant-pollinator interaction webs Abstract Jochen Fru¨ nd,1* Carsten Temporal patterns of flower opening and closure within a day are known as Linne´Õs floral clock. Time of flower F. Dormann2 and Teja Tscharntke1 closure has been explained mainly by light in the traditional botanical literature. We show with a set of 1Agroecology, Department of Crop experiments that Asteraceae flower heads can close within three hours after pollination, whereas un-pollinated Sciences, Georg-August-University flower heads stay open until the late afternoon. This suggests that closing time strongly depends on pollinators. Go¨ ttingen, Grisebachstr. 6, 37077 Using plant-pollinator interaction webs we further demonstrate that the daily pattern of flower opening and the Go¨ ttingen, Germany rapid response to pollination can impose strong temporal dynamics on interspecific interactions within a single 2Department of Computational day. We observed pollinator species turnover and changes in facilitation vs. competition among plants. Our Landscape Ecology, Helmholtz- results show for the first time that pollination induces rapid flower closure on the community level. This causes Center for Environmental Research imprecision in Linne´Õs floral clock with far-reaching consequences for plant-pollinator interactions. (UFZ), Leipzig, Germany *Correspondence: E-mail: Keywords
[email protected] Capitulum closure, Cichorioideae, circadian, Crepis capillaris, flower opening, interaction networks, mutualism, pollination response, temporal specialisation, temporal turnover. Ecology Letters (2011) 14: 896–904 (1) Do pollinated flower heads close earlier than non-pollinated INTRODUCTION flower heads (i.e.