Birds provide multiple ecological services that benefit humans including pollination. In Africa, sunbirds are the dominant vertebrate pollinator. Here we present a species-level assessment for African sunbirds of the number and relative frequency of their food plants that have useful properties to humans. We conducted this analysis by compiling and integrating known sunbird food plants with useful tropical plant and tropical cultivated plant databases. Across Africa, 68% of the 329 genera and 44% of the 468 species of sunbirds’ known food plants are used by humans for medicine, food, building materials, or other uses. Yet most genera and species of useful plants are visited by a small number of sunbird species. The median number of sunbird species that visit a useful genus and species of plant is two and one, respectively. Of the 409 genera and 308 species of useful plants that are sunbird pollinated across one or more of the six predominant habitats for sunbirds, 67% of genera and 71% of species are pollinated by sunbird species that are forest or woodland dependent. Additionally, 58% of all genera and 83% of all species of useful plants pollinated by sunbirds are non-cultivated. In Africa, non-cultivated sunbird-pollinated useful plants are almost entirely collected, used, and traded locally rather than regionally or internationally. Our results indicate that African sunbirds provide important ecological services as pollinators that benefit humans, and these services are provided largely at a local scale. Given the decline of invertebrate and vertebrate pollinators both globally and in Africa, sunbirds are important to the long-term conservation of many useful plants in Africa and hence human well-being.

中文翻译：

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非洲太阳鸟主要对人类有用的植物授粉

鸟类提供多种有益于人类的生态服务，包括授粉。在非洲，太阳鸟是主要的脊椎动物授粉媒介。在这里，我们对非洲太阳鸟进行了物种级评估，评估了它们对人类具有有用特性的食用植物的数量和相对频率。我们通过将已知的太阳鸟食用植物与有用的热带植物和热带栽培植物数据库进行整合和整合来进行此分析。在整个非洲，太阳鸟已知的329种食用植物中的68％和468种中的44％被人类用于药物，食品，建筑材料或其他用途。然而，少数太阳鸟物种会造访大多数有用植物的属和物种。访问有用属和植物物种的太阳鸟物种的中位数分别为2和1。在六个主要太阳鸟栖息地中的一个或多个上，太阳鸟对409属和308种有用植物授粉，其中67％的属和71％的物种被依赖于森林或林地的太阳鸟授粉。另外，被太阳鸟授粉的所有属植物的58％和所有物种的83％是未经栽培的。在非洲，未经栽培的经太阳鸟授粉的有用植物几乎全部在本地而不是在区域或国际范围内收集，使用和交易。我们的结果表明，非洲太阳鸟作为传粉媒介提供了有益于人类的重要生态服务，而这些服务大部分是在当地范围内提供的。鉴于全球和非洲无脊椎动物和脊椎动物授粉媒介的数量下降，