Animal Pollination

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2013, Kathryn Pintus, IUCN , "The Youth Guide to Biodiversity" 1st Edition (Chapter 4) Youth and United Nations Global Alliance. Reproduced with permission.

Chapter 4. Nadine Azzu, FAO. Verbatim.

Pollination is a very important ecosystem service, without which many of the plants that we use for food could not grow. Pollination can occur in three main ways: self-pollination, wind pollination and pollination by animals.

But let’s talk about pollination by animals. There are many types of animal pollinators, including: insects (e.g. bees, wasps, flies, beetles, moths and butterflies), birds (e.g. hummingbirds), and mammals (e.g. bats and the Australian honey possum). Insects are the most common pollinator, especially because they are small and can easily fly from flower to flower. 

Pollination by animals is a very particular and wondrous event. For a plant to be pollinated, the habits and physical characteristics of the animal (e.g. its mouth shape, its ability to see and smell, and even the way it moves around) must be well-matched with the habits and physical characteristics of the flower (e.g. colour, scent and structure). The need for a “perfect match” is one of the reasons why different types of pollinators pollinate different plants.

For example: 

•• Bees are attracted by a flower’s colour, scent and especially nectar (the bees’ food).

•• Beetles, who do not see well, are generally attracted to flowers with a strong scent. 

•• Butterflies, who pollinate during the day, rely mainly on the visual stimulus provided by the plant (in other words, colour).

•• Moths tend to pollinate at night and may rely less on visual cues than on olfactory cues (smell). To catch the attention of their moth pollinators, some plant species emit varying scent intensities throughout the day, with a stronger scent during the evening when moths are active. An example of such a flower is the night blooming jasmine. 

Some red flowers do not have a strong scent at all – for these flowers, hummingbirds are an ideal pollinator. Why is that? Because the vision of hummingbirds is particularly good at seeing red in the colour spectrum, and they also have an underdeveloped sense of smell so, a flower does not need to have such a strong scent for hummingbirds to find it.  

Other plant species have very strongly scented flowers that are very dark in colour. Their dark colour would not attract bees or hummingbirds. In this case, a pollinator with poor vision and a very highly developed sense of smell is ideal. Bats possess these characteristics, and, not surprisingly, are the main pollinators of such plants, doing most of the pollen transfer at night.

So far, we have looked at how the colour and scent of plants attract specific pollinator species. Another factor to consider is the structure and shape of both the flower and the pollinator. Let’s look at twoexamples of pollinators: butterflies and flies. 

Butterflies have long mouth parts that can reach nectar stored at the bottom of long tubular-shaped flowers. These “butterfly” flowers often have a convenient place for butterflies to land, so they can slurp the nectar with ease. 

Some flies, on the other hand, have the capacity to hover above a flower as if they were helicopters (hummingbirds have this capacity, too), and do not always need a landing pad. So flowers pollinated bythese flies tend not to have landing pads.

These examples show how the habits and physical characteristics of both the flower and the pollinator must be well-suited to each other for pollination to occur. Based on these characteristics, which types of animal pollinators visit which types of flowers in your neighbourhood?

The Worlds Largest Pollinator

The ruffed lemur, a mammal found on the island of Madagascar, is the main pollinator of the traveller’s tree (also called traveller’s palm). These banana tree lookalikes are very tall, and can reach a height of 12 m. The lemur climbs the tree and, thanks to its nimble hands, opens the flower bracts and puts its long snout into the flower. In doing so its fur becomes covered in pollen. The pollen is transferred to the next traveller’s tree flower that the lemur visits.