Cycad biology, ecology, and horticulture decisions are not supported by adequate research, and experiments in cycad physiology in particular have been deficient. Our recent report on free sugar content in a range of cycad taxa and tissues sets the stage for developing continued carbohydrate research. Growth and development of cycad pollen, mediation of the herbivory traits of specialist pollina...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY Although many species in the orchid genus Coelogyne are horticulturally popular, hardly anything is known about their pollination. Pollinators of three species were observed in the field in Nepal. This information is urgently needed because many orchid species in Nepal are endangered. Whether the exudates produced by extrafloral nectaries played a role in protection against...

Abundant, many-flowered plants represent reliable and rich food sources for animal pollinators, and may even sustain guilds of specialized pollinators. Contrastingly, rare plants need alternative strategies to ensure pollinators' visitation and faithfulness. Flower mimicry, i.e. the sharing of a similar flower colour and display pattern by different plant species, is a means by which a rare spe...

Burrowing by semi-fossorial rodents modifies soil properties and plant communities. The effects of this burrowing on plants, however, are typically evaluated only by assessing changes in photosynthetic or production traits, not pollination traits. Therefore little is known about the indirect effects of burrowing on pollinators through its effects on the emergence of insect-pollinated plants. We...

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org F covers more than 35% of Earth’s ice-free terrestrial area, and agriculture is expanding and intensifying in many regions to meet the growing demands of human populations (FAO 2013). This trend threatens biodiversity and the ecosystem services on which agriculture depends, including crop pollination (Garibaldi et al. 2011a). Indeed...

Specific pollen placement by zygomorphic flowers on pollinators is one of the key innovations of angiosperm evolution [1]. In most phylogenetic lineages that have evolved zygomorphic flowers, reproductive organs are positioned either in the lower or upper part of the flower. Although these specific positions largely enhance pollen economy, they also represent architectural constraints such that...

Nutrients from a flowering plant are shared by its pollinators, giving rise to competition in the latter. Such exploitative competition of pollinators can limit their abundance and affect the global organization of the mutualistic partnership in the plant-pollinator mutualistic community. Here we generalize a model of the mutualistic network evolution towards increasing the species abundance [S...

Availability of mass flowering plants in landscapes dominated by agriculture can have a strong positive impact on the density of generalist, native pollinators. Row-crop production in Iowa accounts for 75% of the arable acres, with corn, Zea mays, representing the majority of hectares planted. To date, there has been no description of the insect pollinator community found within Iowa cornfields...