Pollinator Maintenance vs. Fruit Production: Partitioned Reproductive Effort in Subdioecious Fuchsia Lycioides

Populations of Fuchsia lycioides Andrews are composed of small-flowered female plants and an ual number of larger-flowered hermaphrodites, which may be female fertile, or morphologically or physiologically female sterile.A major selective force driving the evolution of separate sexes in F.lycioides is suggested to be the partitioning of limited uq associated with pollinator maintenance and fruit pro oduction in a semi-arid mediterranean climate.The hummingbird Rhodopsis vesper atacamensis is the only known pollinator, and appears to be energetically dependent upon F. lycioides.Hermaphrodites are facultative i in their fruit production, produce as much as six times more nectar in females.The unpredictability of hermaphrodite nectar production may be a key factor permitting the evolution of resource partitioning into large-flowered bird-feeding pollen plants and small-flowered reproductive individuals.Subdioecy, a state of dioecy in which populations regularly contain imperfectly differentiated individuals in addition to strictly unisexual individuals, has