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Wild pollinators often visit many plant species and plants are visited by many pollinator species. All these relations together form a network of interactions between plants and pollinators. Surprising similarities were found in the structure of networks consisting out of the interactions between plants and pollinators.
Between 100,000 and 200,000 species of animal act as pollinators of the world's 250,000 species of flowering plant. [12] The majority of these pollinators are insects, but about 1,500 species of birds and mammals visit flowers and may transfer pollen between them. Besides birds and bats which are the most frequent visitors, these include ...
Pollination is a process of moving "pollen from one flower of a species to another flower of the same species" Jay Watson a conservation biologist at the Department of Natural Resources (DNR ...
Honey bees pollinate many plant species that are not native to their natural habitat but are often inefficient pollinators of such plants; if they are visiting ten different species of flower, only a tenth of the pollen they carry may be the right species. Other bees tend to favor one species at a time, therefore do most of the actual pollination.
Herbivory is of extreme ecological importance and prevalence among insects.Perhaps one third (or 500,000) of all described species are herbivores. [4] Herbivorous insects are by far the most important animal pollinators, and constitute significant prey items for predatory animals, as well as acting as major parasites and predators of plants; parasitic species often induce the formation of galls.
All six animals were reported to have licked the flowers, though the total time spent licking the flower heads varied a lot, from around one minute to 1.5 hours.
When both species gain from their interaction, mutualism develops. The mutualistic link between pollinators and plants is very well illustrated. In this instance, the animal pollinator (bee, butterfly, beetle, hummingbird, etc.) receives nourishment in exchange for carrying the plants' pollen from flower to flower (usually nectar or pollen).
Some plant species co-evolved with a particular pollinator species, such as the bee orchid. The species is almost exclusively self-pollinating in its northern ranges, but is pollinated by the solitary bee Eucera in the Mediterranean area. The plant attracts these insects by producing a scent that mimics the scent of the female bee.