Services from Plant–Pollinator Interactions in the Neotropics

The Neotropics, with its large expanses of rainforests, forests and woodland savannas, includes some of the most diverse places on Earth (Kricher, 1999; Myers et al, 2000). A large proportion of plant and animal species in Neotropical communities are unique, including several pollinator species, which provide essential services to human welfare. In general, pollinators are known to enhance the sexual reproduction of the majority of angiosperms (Kearns et al, 1998) and can be important for the production of many crop species (McGregor, 1976; Klein et al, 2007; Aizen et al, 2009a). There is a wide array of arthropod and vertebrate pollinator species in the Neotropics, although we know little about their natural history and contribution to pollination (Kevan and Imperatriz-Fonseca, 2002; Freitas et al, 2009).