Honeybee Communication and Pollination

Honeybees play an important ecological role as pollinators of many plant species, and their products are the basis for a multi-million dollar commercial industry around the world. They are major agricultural pollinators around the world and are keystone pollinators in tropical ecosystems. Pollination has been considered a keystone process to ecosystem function through the facilitation of both plant and animal diversity. The diversity of pollinators and pollination systems is striking. Current understanding of the pollination process shows that, while interesting specialized relationships exist between plants and their pollinators, healthy pollination services are best ensured by an abundance and diversity of pollinators. This is because the flowering plant species only produce seeds if animal pollinators move pollen from the anthers to the stigmas of their flowers. Without this service, delicate interconnected species and processes functioning within an ecosystem would collapse. Many of the most important pollinating insect species are social, adding more complexity between pollination systems and ecosystem dynamics, as it has been well documented that such species have highly evolved methods of methods communication.