Honey Bees Pollination

713 Words2 Pages

What comes to mind when you hear the word “pollination?” For many, flashes of honey bees and some average flowers come to mind, and maybe even the recent “Save the Bees” movement gives you a greater perspective on how important pollination is from an ecological and anthropocentric standpoint. This complex interaction has far reaching effects on communities, both ecological and humanly, all around the world, for pollination by animals accounts for the reproduction of eighty-five percent of the world’s flowering plants (Ollerton, Winfree, & Tarrant, 2011). Without biotic pollination, those plants would seldom reproduce and soon become extinct, having huge impacts on the environments they’re found in and on humans, who rely on animal pollinators …show more content…

Certain plant species rely totally on just one species pollinator, or a pollinator completely on a plant, in what is called specialization. A one-on-one mutualism is rare to find, but when one does occur, the species run a risk. Humans often learn the popularized idiom advising against “putting all of your eggs in one basket,” and this idea can apply to plants and pollinators who count on the existence of just one other species as well. One specific example of a specialized interaction is a yucca moth and yuccas. Both species depend on the population of the other; the yucca on the moth for pollination and reproduction, and the moths on the yuccas for a place to lay their eggs and for their larvae to thrive (Waser & Forrest, 2014). In another case, a species of solitary bee, commonly called the poppy-loving bee, will faithfully only visit bearclaw poppies despite their dwindling population (Buchmann & Nabhan, 1997). Admittedly, most plants who practice biotic pollination and many pollinators are generalists, or they seek to attract a plethora of animals to pollinate their flowers, and these cases of codependence are extreme. Nevertheless, they provide a hyperbolic example that shows how important biodiversity in pollination webs can …show more content…

As briefly mentioned, most plant-pollinator networks are diverse webs that reveal a large number of interactions between different species. For plants, animal pollinators can have reproductive advantages over abiotic pollination for several reasons. When animals move from flower to flower collecting nectar and pollen, they give plants a greater chance of cross-pollination, or when one flower is pollinated with the pollen from a different, closely-related plant (Waser & Forrest, 2014). This act increases the genetic variation of the plant, which can lead to physical diversification, a gene pool less prone to extinction, and even to the development new species of plants! Thus, with an increase in the number of pollinators, flowers will have a greater chance of receiving pollen from many different plants as there are more intersections in the pollination webs. Furthermore, from an evolutionary perspective, it is suggested by studies that floral diversity comes from the work of animal pollinators (Waser & Forrest, 2014). Increasing the world’s biodiversity only strengthens the dynamic life force of Earth and makes extinctions less

Open Document