Maintenance of Specificity in an Isolated Fig

The obligate interaction between figs and their pollinating wasps is often cited as an extraordinary example of reciprocal species specificity and evolutionary cospeciation. However, recent studies have shown that breakdowns in one‐to‐one specificity are not rare (30–60% of species depending on the locality). Combined with evidence of hybridization in some species, this led researchers to propose that a better evolutionary model was one of groups of genetically well‐defined pollinators coevolving with groups of frequently hybridizing figs. Nevertheless, these recent studies still indicate that a majority of fig species have one or more host‐specific pollinator. The extent to which specificity barriers in these species are leaky will have important consequences for the evolutionary process in Ficus . At Lambir Hills N.P., Sarawak, a single individual of Ficus acamptophylla has become recently isolated from conspecifics through clearance of its specialized habitat, but adjacent forest has a diverse fig flora, including 16 species with congeneric pollinators. Thus, when this individual flowered I was able to investigate the maintenance of its specificity barriers in the absence of competition from the normal pollinator. Only 1 percent of inflorescences were entered by a single pollinator species, which had very low reproductive success, and no viable seeds were produced. Nonpollinating wasps also failed to reproduce in any of the inflorescences. These results indicate the maintenance of strict specificity barriers in this fig individual.