New Zealand Journal of Botany abstracts
Individual-level management trade-offs for populations of Dactylanthus
taylorii (Balanophoraceae)
S. M. Ferreira
Auckland Conservancy
Department of Conservation
P.O. Box 68-908
Newton
Auckland, New Zealand
Abstract In general, the conservation of plants
often focuses on reducing the number of species that may feed on a
plant species. Caging is one of the effective methods that
conservationists use. In this study, I examined how such caging may
affect the persistence of the wood rose, Dactylanthus taylorii,
on Little Barrier Island, New Zealand. The probability of increase in
these populations should improve because of caging. I tested this
prediction. The caging also excludes the pollinators of the wood rose
and I corrected for this using hand pollination of the individual
clumps used in the study. The caged clumps had more intact
inflorescences and non-damaged buds than those without cages. However,
the seed densities in the soil samples were not different between the
caged and the non-caged clumps. I propose three explanations. Firstly,
the non-caged clumps may improve their productivity in response to the
feeding by the herbivores. Secondly, feeding by kiore may help the
pollination of the damaged but surviving inflorescences on the
non-caged clumps of the wood rose. Finally, hand pollination may not
compensate for the exclusion of pollinators when the clumps are caged.
The results suggest that caging of clumps of the wood rose may have
small value when the browsers destroy the inflorescences and
hand-pollination cannot be frequent. Caging clumps of the wood rose did
not affect the population resilience of this species on Little Barrier
Island.
Keywords Dactylanthus taylorii; caging;
herbivory; flowering; seeding; Rattus exulans; kiore
B04019; Received 3 June 2004; accepted 4 February 2005; Online
publication date 5 May 2005
New Zealand Journal of Botany, 2005, Vol. 43: 415–424
0028–825X/05/4302–0415 © The Royal Society of New Zealand 2005
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