Pollination: Impact, role-players, interactions and study – A South African perspective

Abstract

Plant-pollinator interactions are essential for maintaining both pollinator and plant communities in native and agricultural environments. Animal-instigated pollination can be complex. Plants are usually visited by a number of different animal species, which in turn may visit flowers of several plant species. Therefore, the identification of the pollen carried by flower visitors is an essential first step in pollination biology. The skill and time required to identify pollen based on structure and morphology has been a major stumbling block in this field. Advances in the genetic analysis of DNA, using DNA barcoding, extracted directly from pollen offers an innovative alternative to traditional methods of pollen identification. This technique, which is reviewed in detail, can be used on pollen loads sampled from bees in the field and from specimens in historic collections. Here the importance of pollination, the role-players involved, their management and the evolution of their interactions, behaviour and morphology are reviewed -with a special focus on South African bees. Significance:• Pollen metabarcoding will enable the identification of pollen for a multitude of uses, including agriculture, conservation and forensics.• Plant-pollinator interaction documentation through pollen identification gives a more certain record of a visitor being a pollinator rather than a flower visitor that could be a nectar gatherer.

Anotaciones sobre interacciones ecológicas en el refugio de vida silvestre barras de cuero y salado, Honduras

“…De esta manera, las plantas proporcionan alimentos para una vasta variedad de animales herbívoros y frugívoros y la mayoría de ellos utilizan estos recursos para su reproducción y supervivencia (Harder y Barret, 2006;Mendoza-Ramírez y Camargo-Sanabria, 2014). La gran mayoría de las angiospermas nativas y cultivadas dependen de varias interacciones con especies animales (Wilmer, 2011;Harder y Barret, 2006), en particular consideradas interacciones mutualistas donde se benefician ambas especies como la polinización y la dispersión (Gous et al, 2017;Morales-Linares et al, 2020). Por otra parte, las interacciones antagonistas como la herbivoría y la depredación se definen como relaciones en donde una de las especies interactuantes se ve afectada y la otra beneficiada (Rico-Gray, 2005).…”

Status and potential role of rangeland insect pollinators for pastoralist livelihood diversification in northern Tanzania

“…Pollinator -plant interaction is one of the most complex and essential phenomena in conservation of pollinators (Ollerton et al, 2011). The interaction between pollinators and target plants can either be generalized or specialized (Gous et al, 2017;Elisante, et al, 2017). Specialization occurs when plants possess flowers attracting a single pollinator species while generalized interaction involves many pollinator species (Gous et al, 2017).…”

“…The interaction between pollinators and target plants can either be generalized or specialized (Gous et al, 2017;Elisante, et al, 2017). Specialization occurs when plants possess flowers attracting a single pollinator species while generalized interaction involves many pollinator species (Gous et al, 2017). Wild and managed bees provide essential ecosystem services to cultivated and wild plants worldwide because they are obligate flower visitors (Ritchie et al, 2016).…”

“…Pollinators possess different foraging strategies whereby some are specialists, adapted to feed on a single plant species (Gous et al, 2017) and others are generalists feeding on a wide range of plant species (Memmott et al, 2004). Specialist pollinators are more vulnerable to changes that occur in their landscapes that are more likely to affect plants they depend on.…”