The Pollination Ecology of Paraboea rufescens (Gesneriaceae): a Buzz-pollinated Tropical Herb with Mirror-image Flowers

The pollination ecology of Paraboea rufescens (Gesneriaceae): a buzz-pollinated tropical herb with mirror-image flowers.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Gesneriaceae is a pantropical plant family with over 3000 species. A great variety of pollination mechanisms have been reported for the neotropical members of the family, but the details of buzz-pollination and enantiostyly for the family have not been described. We investigated the floral biology and pollination ecology of Paraboea rufescens in Xishuangbanna, south-west Chi...

Coevolution: Puff Pollination in Tropical Flowers

A new study shows that birds plucking anthers of the Melastome, Axinaea, demonstrate a novel bird pollination mechanism. Each stamen of Axinaea offers a nutrient-rich, berry-like food body that, when bitten, releases a puff of pollen allowing transfer to stigmas by wind or the pollen-dusted bird.

Tropical forest fragmentation limits pollination of a keystone understory herb.

Loss of native vegetation cover is thought to be a major driver of declines in pollination success worldwide. However, it is not well known whether reducing the fragmentation of remaining vegetation can ameliorate these negative effects. We tested the independent effects of composition vs. configuration on the reproductive success of a keystone tropical forest herb (Heliconia tortuosa). To do t...

The genetics of mirror-image flowers.

Conspicuous asymmetries in forms that are polymorphic within a species can be genetically or environmentally determined. Here, we present a genetic analysis of the inheritance of dimorphic enantiostyly, a sexual polymorphism in which all flowers on a plant have styles that are consistently deflected either to the left or the right side of the floral axis. Using Heteranthera multiflora (Ponteder...

Evolutionary Ecology of Pollination and Reproduction of Tropical Plants