Pollination Ecology Presentation by Johnny Randall

Pollination Ecology:
Past, Present, and Future
Johnny Randall
Director of Conservation Programs
North Carolina Botanical Garden
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Outline
• Pollination primer
• Pollination biology history
– From the Cradle of Civilization to the present
• Our Forgotten Pollinators
– Tales of neglect and decline
• Pollination studies
– Competition for pollination
• Saving our pollinators
Let the Internet be your guide
Insect/flowering plant
co-evolution
A species of Aedes mosquito pollinates
a rare orchid, Platanthera obtusata, he
finally had an answer—and an opportunity
to show “a less clichéd example of an
animal fertilizing a flower.” But making this
image of the mosquito lifting off the orchid
in Minnesota—with pollen stuck to its snout
and a red mite nearby—proved perilous.
Fun facts
- Bee species world wide = 32,000
- Bee species in the United States = 4,000
- Over 85% of flowering plants are pollinated
by insects – and 90% of these insects are bees
- Other insect pollinators include butterflies, moths,
beetles, and flies
- Thank a bee for one
out of every three
bites of food
Pollination biology history
Assyrian bas relief (circa 1500 BC)
Fast forward to the Golden Age of Botany
Carl von Linne’
(May 23 1707 – January 10 1778)
(12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802)
Christian Konrad Sprengel
(1750-1816)
Bidens aristosa
(ditch daisy or tick-seed)
Specialist vs generalist
floral morphologies
Catalpa speciose
(Indian cigar tree)
It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank,
clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds
singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting
about, and with worms crawling through the damp
earth, and to reflect that these elaborately
constructed forms, so different from each other, and
dependent on each other in so complex a manner,
have all been produced by laws acting around us.
Charles Darwin –
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859)
"I have just received such a box full from Mr.
Bateman with the astounding Angraecum
sesquipedalia with a nectary a foot long. Good
Heavens what insect can suck it“.. “In
Madagascar there must be moths with
probosces capable of extension to a length of
between ten and eleven inches."
Charles Darwin
(20 November 1854 – 30 October 1900)
Fast forward to
the present
Robertson’s forb-bee interaction
network of 532 unique interactions
Black lines (125 of 532 interactions; 24%)
are interactions observed in Robertson’s
time and persisted to the present; red lines
(183 of 532; 34%) are interactions that
were lost through the extirpation of bee
species; and blue lines (224 of 532; 42%)
are cases where interactions were lost for
other reasons. Bee species in red are
extirpated.
Published by AAAS
Laura A. Burkle et al. Science 2013;339:1611-1615
Competition for Pollination
Any interaction in which co-occurring plant species suffer reduced
reproductive success because they share pollinators.
Adapted from Wasser 1983
Competition for
pollination a la
Gary Larson…
Pollination ecology of
the simultaneously flowering
Impatiens capensis and
I. pallida (Balsaminaceae)
Competition for pollination between
native and non-native plants
• Ludwigia linifolia vs L. peruviana
• Clethra alnifolia vs C. barbinervis
• Hydrangea arborescens vs H. macrophylla
• Hydrangea radiata vs H. macrophylla
• Callicarpa americana vs C. dichotoma
Solicitation for pollination
What’s bugging our pollinators?
- Habitat loss
- Plants
- Pollinators
- “Pollution”
- Invasive plants
- Ecosystem fragmentation and disruption
- Parasites (e.g. mite Varroa destructor)
- Diseases
- Overzealous pesticide and fungicide use
- Broad spectrum poisons over decades
- More recently neonicotinoids (neonics)
- Introduced bee species
(Goulson et al, 2015)
Read with a
critical eye
Beeware!
The tale of the invasive garlic mustard and the endangered
Virginia white butterfly (Pieris virginiensis)
Getting over Buddleia
Rebuilding Nature’s Relationships
Doug Tallamy and Rick Darke
Jenny Fitch Lecture
Sunday, September 27, 2:00-4:45
Explore your
“ecological address”
It’s sometimes
as easy as your
zip code.
North Carolina
State University
www.ncsu.edu/goingnative/
Another good web site!
More good sites for information…
www.ncbg.unc.edu
www.ncwildflower.org
“Do you have a pollinator garden”?
Ecologically designed landscapes
- minimize ground disturbance
- practice zeroscaping by using the existing vegetation
- protect streams
- identify and protect important features such as vernal pools, rare
plant sites, pollinator habitat (= dead trees and bare ground)
- choose the right plant for the right spot (duh!)
- attempt to recreate natural relationships (i.e., mimic nature to the
greatest extent possible)
- maximize plant diversity and sequentially flowering species
- increase the use of natives and reduce the use of exotics
(particularly known invasives)
Understand the
landscape and
avoid unwitting
ecological harm
Think – “to have a conscious mind, to some
extent of reasoning, remembering experiences,
making rational decisions, etc.”
Recognize the
need for
critter habitat
Nature
20 May, 201520
Creating solitary
bee nesting sites
2001
2015
Sent to local neighborhood listserv
Ground-nesting Colletes thoracicus
North Forest Hills playground – Chapel Hill NC
April 28, 2015
Managing
carpenter
bee nest
habitat
Simple habitat
creation
Botanical gardens
to the rescue?
The monarch,
the milkweed,
and the goldenrod…
Partners for Fish and Wildlife grant to
grow 7,200 plugs of common milkweed
(Asclepias syriaca) for future distribution
and to create a local seed source
for additional monarch habitat projects
And we will augment existing populations of A. incarnata var. pulchra,
A. amplexicaulis, A. tuberosa var. tuberosa, and A. viridiflora
at the Mason Farm Biological Reserve and at the Penny’s Bend
Nature Preserve
If you would be happy
for a week, take a wife
(or husband).
If you would be happy
for a month, kill a pig.
If you would be happy
for all your life, plant
a garden.
Chinese Proverb
Some Town NC
Unhappy people…
Happy people…
Plant for sequential
flowering over the
entire season
The vernal
flora…
Forgotten plants and
forgotten pollinators
Ceanothus americanus
(New Jersey tea)
Mountain laurel
(Kalmia latifolia)
Viburnum species
(Viburnum dentatum,
V. acerifolium, and
V. rufidulum)
American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens)
Crossvine
(Bignonia capreolata)
Yellow jessamine
(Gelsemium sempervirens)
Coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)
Nymphaea odorata –
white waterlily
Lonicera sempervirens - Coral honeysuckle
Parthenium integrifolium – wild quinine
Hollow-stem Joe-pye-weed – Eutrochium fistulosum
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta)
Tickseed (Bidens aristosa) for
the moist ditch in front of your
house…
Eastern aromatic aster (Symphyotrichum oblongifolium)
Maryland Golden-aster
(Chrysopsis mariana)
Coneflowers
(Echinacea spp.)
North Carolina
state wildflower –
Carolina lily
(Lilium michauxii)
New England aster
(Symphotrichum
novae angliae)
“We possess the
collective
potential to create
environments that
nurture both the
human spirit
and the
more-than-human
living world.”
Van der Ryn
and Cowen