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The role of floral traits in urban plant selection
Stephanie Rivest, Simon Joly, Stéphanie Pellerin, Étienne Léville-Bourret, Juliet Yehia
Urbanization alters environments through effects like habitat loss and fragmentation, leading to changes in the composition of biological communities. For plants, reproductive traits may influence how species respond to urbanization, but research on this topic has so far been limited to one or a few species and single cities. Here, we investigated if urbanization selects for plant species based on their floral sex, floral symmetry and self-compatibility across five eastern North American cities. We collected species occurrence and abundance data from vegetation surveys done in meadows and vacant lots. The floral traits of those species were then scored using databases and literature. We compared plant abundance and occurrence across the urban gradient using generalized linear mixed models. We found that none of the traits influenced abundance and that only floral sex impacted occurrence where species were more likely to be present in urban areas if they had bisexual or polymorphic flowers compared to unisexual flowers. Our results may indicate that there are sufficient pollinator services in cities to ensure outcrossing and to maintain flowers of all symmetries. Our results also suggest that unisexual flowers may be less attractive to pollinators. Overall, our results show that floral symmetry and self-compatibility are not indicators of species success in urban areas and that floral sex may only play a minor role. Further studies are needed to determine if other reproductive traits are important for plant success in urban environments.
