Interações tróficas entre plantas, polinizadores, florívoros e aranhas: uma meta-análise

Abstract

The multitrophic relationships between plants, pollinators, florivores and spiders that prey on floral visitors influence the reproductive success of the plants, and some characteristics of the plants influence the choices of these animals for foraging sites. Although these multitrophic relationships are well known in several biomes, there are no studies that integrate the data obtained, point to trends in results and knowledge gaps. This study aimed to integrate the global data of the aforementioned multitrophic relationships, and to answer the following questions: 1) How are the studies distributed over time and biomes? 2) What topics are studied? 3) Which groups of plants, pollinators, florivores and spiders are registered? 3) What are the pollinators and florivores preyed? 4) Do plant traits explain the presence of florivores and spiders? 5) Do spiders have a positive, negative or neutral effect on fruit production? Data were obtained through a systematic literature review in the main scholarly databases, using combinations of the words florivory, spider, pollinator, pollination, risk of predation and plant reproduction. From the returned studies, it was extracted year of publication, biome, plant species, spiders, pollinators, florivores and predated groups. The relation between plant features and the presence of florivores and spiders, as well as the effect of the presence of spiders on fruit production were tested through a meta-analysis. The number of studies has grown since 2000 and the studies were conducted mainly in environments tropical. Herbaceous species of Asteraceae, Hymenoptera, Coleoptera and Thomisidae were, respectively, the most studied groups of plants, pollinators, florivores and spiders. Diptera were the main group of prey. It was clear that the choice of flowers by florivores and spiders does not occur randomly, since some characteristics explained their presence in the flowers (floral longevity and pollination unit for florivores and habit, symmetry, shape, pollination unit and resource floral for spiders). In relation to pollinator-spider interactions, dipterans were the main prey, although bees are commonly the most frequent pollinators in plant communities. An important gap of knowledge was identified: studies including florivores. It was not demonstrated a significant effect of the presence of spiders on fruit production, indicating that, in a general context, spiders have a neutral effect on the reproductive success of plants. Most studies do not provide compatible and / or appropriate information for the application of a meta-analysis. Therefore, new research efforts following standardized methodologies are necessary.