The Greater Antilles is home to a group of passionflowers in three subgenera of the genus Passiflora (Passifloraceae), which are primarily hummingbird-pollinated. Most of the species in this group have red, tubular, odorless flowers with diurnal anthesis. In contrast, the pendulous, lime-green flowers of P. penduliflora, found only in Cuba and Jamaica, emit a musty smell at night and are pollinated by the glossophagine bat, Monophyllus redmani. The separation of the group into different subgenera was based mainly on floral characters related to pollination, including the type of corona. This structure is usually composed of separate filaments protecting the entrance to the nectar chamber. However, in some species in the Greater Antilles, the individual filaments have fused into a tube. The first objective of the study was to gather detailed information on the pollination ecology of species representative of the three Greater Antillean, vertebrate-pollinated subgenera, including data on the foraging behavior of floral visitors, and phenology, breeding system and rates of nectar secretion of the passionflowers. The second objective was to generate a phylogenetic hypothesis of the relationships among the species in the three vertebrate-pollinated subgenera of the Greater Antilles. This hypothesis was used to map individual characters that are ecologically important in the pollination of Passiflora sp.. Differences in floral structures such as the corona appear to play an important ecological role in specialization to certain pollinators and may have been important in driving the evolution of different breeding systems in vertebrate-pollinated Greater Antillean Passiflora.

Key words: bat-pollination, Greater Antilles, hummingbird-pollination, Passiflora