A TEST OF POLLINATOR SPECIFICITY AND MORPHOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE BETWEEN NECTARIVOROUS BIRDS AND RAIN-FOREST TREE FLOWERS NEW-GUINEA

Interactions between flowering trees in a representative sample of veg etation, and the birds that fed at their flowers, were studied for 2 y ears in lowland tropical hill forest in New Guinea. All 2,200 trees in a 3-ha plot were tagged, identified, mapped, and monitored monthly. A pproximately 60% of all individual trees flowered during the study; al l species that these flowering individuals belonged to were evaluated for bird visitation. Approximately 13% of the 164 resident species of New Guinea avifauna at the study site, especially honey eaters and par rots, visited flowers. In the forest inventory plot, approximately 15- 22% of all 86 tree species that flowered during the study were visited by birds; most of these tree species were canopy species. Results sho wed that there was no statistically significant correlation between bi rd species grouped by bill morphology and flower species grouped as mo rphotypes and ranked by nectar accessibility, although strong but unex pected bird/plant associations were evident. These associations may be related to variables such as body mass or perch size. These results a re discussed in comparison with results from the Neotropics and Austra lia, and in terms of morphological convergence and pollinator specific ity in pollination systems.