9. Creeping Fruitless Falls
143
likely to be a more common reason for pollination failure and thus infertility of
wild plants irrespective of whether the plant is pollinator specialist or generalist.
In highly fragmented anthropocentric landscapes, habitat and/or population
restoration would be an effectual means for preventing species extinction. In order
to restore plant populations and retain the present amount of genetic diversity, we
should turn to the best plant ecology and population genetics currently available in
designing the individual steps for the restoration practice: artificial crosses by hand
pollination, seed collection, dormancy breaking and germination, and planting the
obtained seedlings to appropriate safe-sites in natural or restored habitats. Soil seed
banks may have great potential as plant materials for restoration of the vegetation
of moist habitats. Monitoring the population status under several comparable management regimes (Pavlik et al. 1993) is desired to test the hypotheses on the factors
causing population decline and to assess the self-sustainability of the restored population and appropriate management required for population persistence.
'Pollinator therapy', i.e., plant habitat management including reintroduction
and re-establishment of suitable pollinator populations would be an indispensable
measure in many cases for conservation of threatened populations suffering pollinator loss. Designing good pollinator therapy, however, requires scaling-up of pollination ecology to even higher levels of biological organization, i.e., interactions
of plant and pollinator populations and community processes, for which we suffer
an extreme poverty of information at present.
Restoration and management will provide not only effective measures for
biodiversity conservation, but also good opportunities for population and community level experiments to enhance our understanding of 'a web of complex relations' (Darwin 1859), which is essential for wise, prudent use and management of
our biodiversity.
Acknowledgments
The research described in this article was partly supported by Grants-in-Aid for
Scientific Research, No. 08304040, 07304081 and 08454249, from the Ministry of
Education, Science , Sports and Culture, and also by the Global Environment Research Fund (F-1) from the Environment Agency.
References
Allee WC (1951) The social life of animals. Beacon, Boston
Aizen MA, Feinsinger l' (1994) Forest fragmentation, pollination, and plant reproduction in
a Chaco dry forest, Argentina. Ecology 75:330-351
Barrett SCH (1992) Heterostylous genetic polymorph isms: model systems for evolutionary
analysis. In: Barrett SCH (Ed) Evolution and function of heterostyly. Springer, Berlin,
pp 1-29
143
likely to be a more common reason for pollination failure and thus infertility of
wild plants irrespective of whether the plant is pollinator specialist or generalist.
In highly fragmented anthropocentric landscapes, habitat and/or population
restoration would be an effectual means for preventing species extinction. In order
to restore plant populations and retain the present amount of genetic diversity, we
should turn to the best plant ecology and population genetics currently available in
designing the individual steps for the restoration practice: artificial crosses by hand
pollination, seed collection, dormancy breaking and germination, and planting the
obtained seedlings to appropriate safe-sites in natural or restored habitats. Soil seed
banks may have great potential as plant materials for restoration of the vegetation
of moist habitats. Monitoring the population status under several comparable management regimes (Pavlik et al. 1993) is desired to test the hypotheses on the factors
causing population decline and to assess the self-sustainability of the restored population and appropriate management required for population persistence.
'Pollinator therapy', i.e., plant habitat management including reintroduction
and re-establishment of suitable pollinator populations would be an indispensable
measure in many cases for conservation of threatened populations suffering pollinator loss. Designing good pollinator therapy, however, requires scaling-up of pollination ecology to even higher levels of biological organization, i.e., interactions
of plant and pollinator populations and community processes, for which we suffer
an extreme poverty of information at present.
Restoration and management will provide not only effective measures for
biodiversity conservation, but also good opportunities for population and community level experiments to enhance our understanding of 'a web of complex relations' (Darwin 1859), which is essential for wise, prudent use and management of
our biodiversity.
Acknowledgments
The research described in this article was partly supported by Grants-in-Aid for
Scientific Research, No. 08304040, 07304081 and 08454249, from the Ministry of
Education, Science , Sports and Culture, and also by the Global Environment Research Fund (F-1) from the Environment Agency.
References
Allee WC (1951) The social life of animals. Beacon, Boston
Aizen MA, Feinsinger l' (1994) Forest fragmentation, pollination, and plant reproduction in
a Chaco dry forest, Argentina. Ecology 75:330-351
Barrett SCH (1992) Heterostylous genetic polymorph isms: model systems for evolutionary
analysis. In: Barrett SCH (Ed) Evolution and function of heterostyly. Springer, Berlin,
pp 1-29