POLLINATORS

[KBW]

When we spray pesticides, many of these insects die down. Effect, seed formulation will be very weak. Remedy, buy seed from seed sellers, what are they meant for afterall. But what about the insects? What insects?

[mikhurram]

An entomologist at U.C. Berkely carried out a survey of 1000 different plants (50 native and 950 non native) in U.S.A. The findings were that 50-80 % of the 50 native plants drew the pollinators and merely 10% of the of the 950 plants attracted pollinators.

[Farhan Ahmed]

There is a reason behind it.......All don't buy starbucks when it opens first

[mikhurram]

Basically each and every specie of flowering plant has its own unique flowering evolutionary story that is closely coupled with the animals that pollinate it e.g. Jade wine is pollinated by bats and it is implied is the reason why its flowers hang upside down to facilitate pollination by bats and its unusual jade green colours stands out at night enticing bats.

Likewise in the case of orchids the lower lips of the flower is controlled by a specific set of genes which means it can evolve and change its shape and colour while the rest of the petals remain the same. Some of the orchids mimic the shape of female bee to attract male bees to mate it for pollination. The Mediterranean Ophry's orchid (image below) resembles a female wasp and emits a similar odour to attract the male wasp. In his attempt to mate with the flower, the male wasp picks up pollinea-pollen masses which eventually brush off another flower enabling pollination.

Mediterranean Ophry's Orchid bearing resemblance to female wasp

To gather nectar insects too have perfected their adaptation. Mouth parts have developed into straw like proboscises, often longer than the insect bodies that penetrate deep into the flowers evident in the case of the white Christmas Star orchid (Angraecum Sesuipedale) found in Madagascar, has an exceedingly long spur, or nectary, hanging down from the flower lip. (see image below). The spur is about a foot long, but the nectar fills only an inch and a half at the extreme end. Charles Darwin speculated about the existence of a moth with a long proboscis. Entomologists ridiculed his prediction, but 40 years later Xanthopan Morgani Praedicta, a night flying moth with a 12 inch tonque was discovered in Madagascar.

Christmas Star Orchid

The mutual adaptation has become so interwoven that some plants cater only to certain insects, whose lives in turn hinge exclusively on that plant .One of nature’s delicacies the fig tree grown in California known as Calimyrnas (female fig plant) unlike the other fig varieties cannot mature without pollination a feat only done by fig wasps since prehistoric ages. Technically figs are inverted flowers that store their pollen inside the fruits. Introduced to California from Turkey in the 19th century growers tried to solve this problem by hand pollinating the female fruit which required too much labour. Then they got the answer that the pollination job in Turkey from where the fig originated was done by fig wasps.

The fig wasps begin their work inside the fruit of the male fig tree, called the Capri fig which actually consists of a case enclosing fruit pulp and at the center two kinds of flowers, one male (stamen) and one female (pistel). The male fig flower of Capri fig is the only flower where the female can lay its eggs at the base of the flower. Then the flowers grow a protective covering known as gall. One gall can become the haven for as many as 600 eggs.

The baby wasps which mature into blind wingless male wasps have sharp teeth which they use in chewing a hole in the top of a globular gall and then drop down on the females fertilizing them by inserting their specially adapted abdomen and then die (within a day from their birth). Female wasps then use this hole as an escape route to go to the outside world. The female passes through a thicket of pollen producing flowers through which she must pass to reach the outside world. On the way out she becomes loaded with white pollen which tries to shed but cannot and flies off in search of male figs (Capri figs) to deposit their eggs in and the cycle begins again.

If a female fig wasp enters an edible female fig (Calimyrna), she tries to deposit an egg at the base of a flower part called style by thrusting her short ovipositor (Ovary depositor) at the base in the female fig’s flower which hinders her attempts to lay her eggs as the style is too long. The female wasp again and again she tries to brush off the male pollen loaded on her body against the female flowers. Frustrated the female dies in her unsuccessfull quest to lay eggs but succeeds in pollinating the female flowers. Only in the male figs (Capri) flowers can she successfully laying her eggs. Pollination ensures that the female flower of Calimyrna ripens into an edible fig fruit consumed by us. Long before this edible fig matures, its enzyme completely assimilate the female wasp by breaking its carcass into protein. The male and female wasp life span is merely a day but complete their role assigned by nature. It’s a win win situation for the grower who ends up with either Capri figs full of wasp eggs or edible figs full of seeds.

Fig growers trick female wasps in finding another male fig (Capri fig) by stapling bags of wasp filled Capri figs in the female fig trees (Calimyrana). The merging wasps instinctively try to lay their eggs in the most convenient fig and the relocation assures that they will fly to commercially valuable Calimyrana rather then to a distant male Capri fig.

[mikhurram]

Clarification: The first image is of a male wasp pollinating Ophry's Orchids whom the male wasp perceives to be a female wasp.