Johnny Randall

Director of Conservation Programs

North Carolina Botanical GardenThe University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Pollination Ecology:

Past, Present, and Future

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

Assyrian bas relief (circa 1500 BC)

Pollination biology history

Carl von Linne’

(May 23 1707 – January 10 1778)

Fast forward to the Golden Age of Botany

(12 December 1731 – 18 April 1802)

Christian Konrad Sprengel

(1750-1816)

Bidens aristosa

(ditch daisy or tick-seed)

Catalpa speciose

(Indian cigar tree)

Specialist vs generalist

floral morphologies

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

Laura A. Burkle et al. Science 2013;339:1611-1615

Published by AAAS

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.

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 RelationshipsDoug Tallamy and Rick Darke

Jenny Fitch LectureSunday, 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!

www.ncwildflower.org

More good sites for information…

www.ncbg.unc.edu

“Do you have a pollinator garden”?

- 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)

Ecologically designed landscapes

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

Nature20 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. viridifloraat 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 happyfor a month, kill a pig.

If you would be happyfor all your life, planta 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)

Viburnum species

(Viburnum dentatum, V. acerifolium, and V. rufidulum)

Mountain laurel

(Kalmia latifolia)

American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens)

Crossvine (Bignonia capreolata)

Yellow jessamine

(Gelsemium sempervirens)

Coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)

Lonicera sempervirens - Coral honeysuckle

Nymphaea odorata –

white waterlily

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