Wing pollination by bees in Mexacanthus (Acanthaceae)?

Helping Agricultural Pollination & Bees in Farmland

Role of Native Bees in Apple Pollination

to be eff ective vectors of apple pollen.” Pollination is an essential step in production of fruits and many vegetables. Th e most widely used insect for fruit pollination is the European honey bee, Apis mellifera. Honey bees are ideal pollinators in many crop systems: each colony produces thousands of foraging workers and colonies can be moved into orchards and fields during the flowering peri...

Wild bees enhance honey bees' pollination of hybrid sunflower.

Pollinators are required for producing 15-30% of the human food supply, and farmers rely on managed honey bees throughout the world to provide these services. Yet honey bees are not always the most efficient pollinators of all crops and are declining in various parts of the world. Crop pollination shortages are becoming increasingly common. We found that behavioral interactions between wild and...

Conserving wild bees for crop pollination

A substantial proportion of the worlds crops rely on insect pollination, yet for many we have little or no information as to which pollinators are most effective. Pollinator management has traditionally focussed exclusively on one species, the honeybee, Apis mellifera. Yet this bee is not able to adequately pollinate some crops, and is an unreliable pollinator in cold and wet climates. Natural ...

Is floral specialization an evolutionary dead-end? Pollination system transitions in Ruellia (Acanthaceae).

Pollination systems frequently reflect adaptations to particular groups of pollinators. Such systems are indicative of evolutionary specialization and have been important in angiosperm diversification. We studied the evolution of pollination systems in the large genus Ruellia. Phylogenetic analyses, morphological ordinations, ancestral state reconstructions, and a character mapping simulation w...