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For the plant, the pollinizer, this can be an important mechanism for sexual reproduction, as the pollinator distributes its pollen. Few flowering plants self-pollinate ; some can provide their own pollen (self fertile), but require a pollinator to move the pollen; others are dependent on cross pollination from a genetically different source of ...
This means that the core of the network is made up of highly connected generalists (a pollinator that visits many different species of plant), while specialized species interact with a subset of the species that the generalists interact with (a pollinator that visits few species of plant, which are also visited by generalist pollinators). [5]
One example of functional equivalence is demonstrated in plant-pollinator relationships, whereby a certain plant species may evolve flower morphology that selects for pollination by a host of taxonomically-unrelated species to provide the same function (fruit production following pollination). [3] For example, the herbaceous plant spiny madwort ...
Pollination has driven the coevolution of flowering plants and their animal pollinators for over 100 million years. See also: Pollination and Plant-pollinator interactions In pollination, pollinators including insects ( entomophily ), some birds ( ornithophily ), and some bats , transfer pollen from a male flower part to a female flower part ...
A familiar example of a mutualism is the relationship between flowering plants and their pollinators. [2] [3] The plant benefits from the spread of pollen between flowers, while the pollinator receives some form of nourishment, either from nectar or the pollen itself.
[1] [2] Plant-animal interactions can take on important ecological functions and manifest in a variety of combinations of favorable and unfavorable associations, for example predation, frugivory and herbivory, parasitism, and mutualism. [3] Without mutualistic relationships, some plants may not be able to complete their life cycles, and the ...
This is a list of crop plants pollinated by bees along with how much crop yield is improved by bee pollination. [1] Most of them are pollinated in whole or part by honey bees and by the crop's natural pollinators such as bumblebees, orchard bees, squash bees, and solitary bees. Where the same plants have non-bee pollinators such as birds or ...
Pollination is necessary for plants to continue their populations and 3/4 of the plant species that contribute to the world's food supply are plants that require pollinators. [78] Insect pollinators, like bees, are large contributors to crop production, over 200 billion dollars worth of crop species are pollinated by these insects. [71]