Reciprocal Coevolution and Plant-Pollinator Interactions Essays

Many plants rely heavily on bees as their main pollinator to reproduce. The main fear is that even though many flowers also rely on mammals and other insects to assist in the pollination process, bees are the biggest and most vital source of this life cycle. As the bees disappear the reproduction process of many plants does not happen as efficiently thus less plants are produced, this

Furthermore bees specifically are particularly efficient with it being estimated that they are the sole pollinators for 50% of the approximate 80% of flowering plants which rely on insects for pollination (Bradbear, 2009). Their efficiency is further illustrated by the fact that a single colony containing 25,000 forager bees is able to pollinate 250 million flowers per day (Bradbear, 2009). As a result of this it can be seen that bees are hugely important as pollinators with many species of flower being completely dependent on them. Furthermore, the importance of bees extends beyond ecological diversity; certain types of bees are hugely important economically. In addition to pollinating a large variety of fruit and vegetables, bees produce Honey; together this results in them having an estimated value of service of £200m a year in the UK (National Audit Office (NAO), 2009). Overall it can be seen that bees are of significant importance that any decrease in population should be treated with concern, as a result of this a large quantity of research has been conducted into identifying possible

The “Brassica rapa” is a fast plant known as the field mustard. This plant is well known for its rapid growing rate, which makes it an easy breeding cycle and easy to pollinate. In giving so this makes “Brassica rapa” a great participant for testing Gregor Mendel’s theories of inheritance. The “Brassica rapa” acts like a test subject in testing cross-pollination giving the understanding to the dominant allele of colored stems. There are different colors that are visible on the stem that are above the soil; the colors vary from green to purple. P1 seed was ordered, germinated and cross-pollinated until germination of the next off spring of plants were also done. It was

In this chapter the author stresses the importance of creatures that pollinate such as insects, birds,

Pollination is essentially plant reproduction - without help from animal pollinators, our everyday food supply would look much different

Bees would collect food resources from the plant and in return the reproduction of the plants)

135 million years ago, vegetation relied on the wind to carry out pollen in the remote hopes that a meager portion would settle on a female flower (Goulson). An inefficient and hasty system, it has been grown out of, as the phenomenon of evolution produced an improved response in the form of the bee, a humble, hard-working insect. For a creature most humans prefer to avoid, the bee plays a crucial role in the way society functions and survives. Pollination, a valuable service, is jeopardized at the hands of humans. This is a case seen in the correlation between the use of pesticides, applying destructive methods of industrial agriculture, and climate change. As the biologist E.O. Wilson once observed, “If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos”

Scientists and Beekeepers Can Make Killer Bees Less Aggressive People discovered honey since an ancient time and considering it as liquid gold. There are many kinds of bees that produce honey, and it differs from place to place. One remarkable species is African honeybee which well known for its ability to produce more honey than other species and survive in hot climate (Anne, 2006). Evans and Butler(2010) have acknowledged that some species of honey bees are known as Killer bees or Africanized bees, which are currently living in some parts of South America and North America, and they started to move northward in the United States.

Opossums may be one of the most overlooked marsupials among the human race, but bees are one of the most stigma-surrounded insects. Bees pollinate plants; this statement sounds simple but holds the key to nearly every ecosystem and lifestyle there is. It is estimated by the USDA that bees pollinate over one-sixth of the United States’ flowering plants and over 400 species of agricultural plants (New Agriculturist 1). Flowering plants are essential to the oxygen cycle: from simple lavender to the North American Tupelo Tree (Hadley 1).The proper and healthy pollination of plants like these would be absolutely impossible with honeybees and bumblebees, they are simply attracted to their unique pollens, as a means of energy, and spread them wherever

Urbanization removes the habitats for pollinators. Ground-nesting pollinators have limited habitat in the cities or areas covered by concrete.

The monarchs brush some pollen on the underside of their body when they try to feed of the nectar producing plants. When they feed again on another plant on their journey, some of the pollen get transferred to a new plant (“Butterfly Pollination”). In this manner, pollen from the north can fertilize a flower in the south, and vice versa. This cross-pollinating phenomenon help create the natural crossbred plants. Since pollen gets transferred from and to a lot of different species of plants, it makes the possibility of new genetic mutations, and evolution of a species. It also increases the availability of essential plants across the

Pollen and honey are the only food bees eat. The relationship between the bees and flowers evolved through co­evolution when a Bee accidentally landed on a flower and found sugar and since then bees have been relying on the flowers for food and the flower has been relying on the Bee to pollinate it. They have no harmful effects on each other, they help each other a lot and they

2003; Vázquez & Aizen 2004; Dupont et al. 2009). Currently, one of the most complicated challenges is to explain which the factors that explain plant-pollinator interaction patterns are (see Fenster et al. 2004; Danieli-Silva 2012; Rosas-Guerrero et al. 2014). Such plant-pollinator interactions are determined by pollinators, which feed on floral rewards, such as nectar, pollen, scents, floral oils and resins (Faegri and van der Pijl, 1979; Simpson & Neff 1981). So that, plant-pollinator interactions are determined by the biology as well as the choices of pollinators. At a first level, these interactions are defined by the coincidence between the flowering periods of plant species and activity periods of antophiles (Herrera 1988; Bosch et al. 1997). Secondly, pollinators choose between the different plant species based on a mixture of innate preferences (Heuschen et al. 2005, Rodriguez et al. 2005, Dormont et al. 2010, Willmer 2011) and by subsequent associative learning. In this framework, several studies have shown that certain floral traits are related to reward abundance and quality (Smithson & Macnair 1997; Blarer et al. 2002; Schaefer et

Organisms depend on their communities, they depend on the interspecific relationships they develop; from predation (herbivory, carnivores, etc.), mutualism, parasitism, and commensalism. Without each other, they could not survive, and in some cases they even evolve with one another. The evolutionary process of pollination of flowers provides some examples of this. Tropical plants are dioecious, which translates to having separate male and female plants. Tropical plants cannot rely on the traditional wind pollination method due to the lack of wind and lack of targets nearby; therefore, they cannot pollinate themselves or plants of the same sex. Instead, they often look towards the mobile organisms that surround them. To do this, they 've evolved ways to attract them; either provide them with a

Bees aren 't the only insect pollinators in the world, but they are by far the most widespread ones. Despite this, non-bee insect pollinators have a contributing factor to the success of pollination that the bees themselves don 't. There have been studies on the success of the pollination and 'seeding ' of flowers and plants. Bees have a fairly average success rate, focusing more on spreading the pollination farther afield than the success of the 'seeding '. Non-bee insects tend to stay in a small ranged area that allows them to visit the same flowers more often, thus increasing the success of their visits.