An ecosystem is a highly complex network of interactions between plants, animals, and the environment. Within this ecological community, there are two groups of organisms that are completely essential. Plants and pollinators share a crucial type of relationship for genetic and reproductive purposes.
From the plant’s perspective, it produces pollen as the male gametophyte (Komosinska-Vassev et al., 2015). It is produced in the stamen and stored in the anther (Komosinska-Vassev et al., 2015). Pollen is a very complex structure as it is composed of several biologically active molecules (Table 1). In order to reproduce and share genetic information, the pollen must spread to other plants by wind or pollinators.
Table 1: Components found in one grain of air-dried pollen at 40°C (Komosinska-Vassev et al., 2015).
| Subcomponents | Percentage |
| Fatty acids, phenolic compounds, enzymes, coenzymes, and other bioelements | 30.5% |
| Proteins (excluding essential amino acids) | 21.3% |
| Reducing sugars | 19.94% |
| Lipids | 12.8% |
| Essential amino acids (methionine, lysine, threonine, histidine, leucine, isoleucine, valine, phenylalanine, tryptophan) | 11.5% |
| Sucrose | 3.7% |
| Vitamin C | 0.19% |
| β-carotene | 0.07% |
Bees are a common example of pollinators. More specifically, Euglossa (Figure 1) is a genus of orchid bees that travel distances of around 20 km to collect resin from isolated vine populations of Dalechampia scandens (Opedal et al., 2017; Whitfield, 2017). This is an incredible distance compared to the bumblebees and syrphid flies in the Netherlands, which rarely travel farther than 100 m to pollinate isolated populations of Scabiosa columbaria (Velterop, 2000). Euglossa will travel these large distances to gather the white resin by collecting the plant pollen and mixing it with a secretion from its salivary glands (Komosinska-Vassev et al., 2015). The bee will then keep this mixture in a basket of sorts near its back legs, or its corbiculae, as it travels back to the nest (Komosinska-Vassev et al., 2015; Whitfield, 2017). Overall, the white resin is used for construction and maintenance of its home (Komosinska-Vassev et al., 2015; Whitfield, 2017).
The Euglossine bees utilise a specific type of pollination tactic called trap-lining (Whitfield, 2017). This behaviour is basically the regular checking up on a food source, much like checking your fishing rod at intermittent times. Since these bees collect resin from several isolated populations of these vines, there is a large movement of pollen across great distances (Opedal et al., 2017; Whitfield, 2017). Therefore, pollination facilitates some gene flow within the vine communities, even though they are separated by distances of approximately 20 km. However, a study conducted by Opedal et al. in 2017 suggests that the Euglossine bees’ contribution alone is not significant enough to balance out the natural effects of genetic drift typically found in these kinds of patchy plant communities. In comparison, S. columbaria populations in the Netherlands can measure up to 850 m apart, which is too great of a distance for their pollinators to travel (Velterop, 2000). This suggests that the populations at greater distances are vulnerable to losing genetic information (Velterop, 2000).
Pollination across communities is important so that plants are able to maintain genetic diversity and reproduce. Without pollinators like bees to consistently aid in the movement of pollen, plant growth is impossible. Thus, pollination is one of the many contributors in order to preserve balance in ecosystems, which is necessary to support all life on Earth.
References
Komosinska-Vassev, K., Olczyk, P., Kaźmierczak, J., Mencner, L. and Olczyk, K., 2015. Bee pollen: chemical composition and therapeutic application. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, [online] 2015. Available at: <https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecam/2015/297425/cta/>.
Opedal, Ø.H., Falahati-Anbaran, M., Albertsen, E., Armbruster, W.S., Pérez-Barrales, R., Stenøien, H.K. and Pélabon, C., 2017. Euglossine bees mediate only limited long-distance gene flow in a tropical vine. New Phytologist, 213(4), pp.1898–1908.
Velterop, O., 2000. Effects of fragmentation on pollen and gene flow in insect-pollinated plant populations. University of Groningen. [online] Available at: <http://www.rug.nl/research/portal/files/3128340/summary.pdf>.
Whitfield, Mike. “Behind The Cover: New Phytologist 213:4, March 2017”. New Phyt blog. N.p., 2017. Web. 12 Mar. 2017.
Comments
11 Responses to “Bee Free to Pollinate”
Hi everybody,
I decided to write this blog post about pollination when I saw the cover photo for the March 2017 issue of The New Phytologist. As I’m interested in plant-animal interactions, I wanted to explore pollen itself and the importance of bees as pollinators. This combines aspects from biochemistry and ecology.
Feel free to comment and provide suggestions about grammar and overall clarity of my blog post!
Much appreciated,
Tanya Daniel
Hi Tanya!
This is a very relevant blog as the topic of bees is quite popular in the media currently. I have a few suggestions for you:
1) The sentence, ” In one grain of air-dried pollen at 40°C, it is composed of”, is a little misleading. Instead, I would say, “One grain of air-dried pollen at 40°C is composed of…”
2) The first sentence of paragraph three should be “example of pollinators” as you are referring to many species of bees.
3) I don’t think you finished your thought on the final sentence of the third paragraph.
4) I am confused about the direct correlation between the behaviour and how this is affecting the gene flow as described in the fourth paragraph. Is this implying the behaviour is transferred through the pollination?
Overall, great job and I hope this helps!
Katie 🙂
Hi Katie,
I’ve changed the wording of the sentences that you’ve mentioned. I’ll also try to make the correlation more clear. Stay tuned for those changes.
Thank you for your input!
Tanya Daniel
Hi Tanya,
I enjoyed reading your blog. I learned a lot about pollination and bees from many different perspectives. The only suggestion that I have would be to remove the list of essential amino acids in parenthesis in paragraph two. I think that this would allow the sentence to flow better.
Thanks for the great read!
Aaron
Hi Aaron,
I’ll make note of that, I think a better option would be to put it into a table.
Thanks for reading,
Tanya Daniel
Hi Tanya,
I enjoyed your blog, it was informative and well written. I have a couple minor suggestions:
– For your second sentence, I would get rid of the dash and instead rephrase it as “groups of organisms are essential for both the ecosystem and human survival
– For the second sentence in the second paragraph I would think about replacing “in which” with :of which”
– I would maybe find a different way to represent the composition of pollen, as it creates a long, unwieldy sentence.
Really enjoyed the read!
– Amory
Thanks Amory for your feedback! I’ve incorporated your suggestions.
Hi Tanya,
Interesting blog topic and overall well-written. I just have two small comments:
– I would reword your second sentence of the second paragraph to be a little more clear: “Since, pollen is used for reproductive purposes, it is composed of several biologically active components”
– third sentence of third paragraph “The bee will then keep this mixture in a basket of sorts by its back legs, or its corbiculae” I would just add the word “using” by saying “in a basket of sorts by using its..” just to make the sentence more clear
Happy editing,
Sonya
Thanks for your feedback, Sonya! I’ve changed the word ‘by’ to ‘near’ so, hopefully, that clarifies the sentence regarding the corbiculae. I’ve also re-phrased the first couple of the sentences in the second paragraph.
All the best,
Tanya Daniel
Hi Tanya!
I very much enjoyed reading your blog post as it allowed me to see just how much the little things in life, that go unnoticed, are vital to the survival of plant species and all those who rely on them. I think your post was very well written and easy to follow as you transitioned from paragraph to paragraph with ease. Below I have left a few suggestions you may or may not want to consider while revising your post!
I think you did a great job at capturing the reader’s attention to read further into your blog post in your introductory paragraph because you made powerful statements. However, I do suggest you give more of an introduction to your topic in the introduction paragraph as it is a big vague.
I suggest you place your image below the paragraph that you reference the image in as the eye naturally follows downwards as you read a text. In my opinion, Figure 1 should be below paragraph three.
The last sentence of your third paragraph seems incomplete so you may want to consider revising it.
I think you should expand upon ideas in your concluding paragraph as they are very interesting and will bring strength to your blog post and its purpose.
Best regards,
Nicole
Thank you for your feedback, Nicole! I agree with moving the picture. It does make sense to have Figure 1 below paragraph 3. I’ve also re-worded my introduction and conclusion to better convey my overall thesis/topic of my blog post.
Cheers,
Tanya Daniel