Studies on plant-pollinator interaction and its significances
植物与传粉者相互作用的研究及其意义

The majority of flowering plants and crops rely in whole or part on animals for pollination. The mutualism between plants and pollinators has attracted ecologists and evolutionists to use this type of inter-specific interaction as a model system to study species adaptation and diversification since Charles Darwin. Recent debate on the nature of pollination systems call for studies of this interaction at different levels, rang-ing from single species to entire communities in a given area. At the species level, detailed studies suggest that floral traits are under selection from mutualists and antagonists as well as the physical environment. In contrast, studies at community-level are rare, but recent analyses indicate considerable spatial and temporal variation in both generalized and specialized pollination systems. This special issue of Biodiversity Science focuses on plant-pollinator interaction, presenting current research status in this area from China. Papers in-clude floral traits and pollinator behaviors addressed by phenotypic manipulation, estimates of pollen re-moval and receipt, anatomy of flowers, histochemistry analysis and spatial and temporal comparison. The taxa being investigated include wild orchid and cultivated legume, endemic, endangered and invasive species with diverse sexual systems. These thirteen experimental studies and three reviews show the development of pollination biology in China and expose how to facilitate our understanding of the critical ecological proc-esses underlying interspecific interaction in both natural and agricultural ecosystems.