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Most flowering plants depend on animals for pollination. In warm wet tropical regions, more than 90% of plant species are pollinated by animals. In Dominica, a Caribbean island country, researchers have identified a mutualistic relationship between two species of heliconia plant (Heliconia bihai and H. caribaea) and their hummingbird pollinator, the Purple-throated carib (Eulampis jugularis). The association is so specific that it has often been cited as an example in the scientific literature.

For this reason, when Hurricane Maria (category 5, the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds of more than 250 kph) struck the region in 2017 and killed 75% of the entire E. jugularis population, these two species of heliconia were expected to become extinct.

However, a paper recently published in New Phytologist shows that other birds have become pollinators of the plants in question. The authors are based in Brazil, Denmark, Switzerland, United States and United Kingdom, with a contribution by the Center for Research on Biodiversity Dynamics and Climate Change (CBioClima), a Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center (RIDC) in Rio Claro, Brazil.

"In 2022 we studied the region in great detail, analyzing bird-heliconia visitation types and rates, as well as pollen deposition and transportation patterns. Our findings pointed to drastic changes: other hummingbird species and also the Bananaquit (Coereba flaveola) had begun to visit and pollinate heliconia flowers at similar rates to E. jugularis or even higher," said Fernando Gonçalves, a member of CBioClima and currently a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with Jordi Bascompte's laboratory at the University of Zurich (UZH) in Switzerland.

"Our analysis suggested that the decline in the population of E. jugularis resulted in a breakdown of the competitive exclusion of other species and allowed other birds to become effective pollinators. We concluded that specialized pollination systems can become generalized after natural disturbances such as hurricanes, showing that the ecosystem was resilient," he said.

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