Pollination: Bees at Work

Environmental & Science Education, STEM, Behavior, Biological Evolution, Wildlife, Nature, Biodiversity

Ed Hessler

Readers of WEIT know the occasional photo essays by Athayde Tonhasca Júnior. This one is about pollination by bees and may be read here, including reader responses.

To give you an idea of what's ahead in this story I use the concluding paragraph of another superb entry where Junior provides a brief summary.

"All these adaptations demonstrate that pollination is a negotiation between parties with conflicting interests. There is nothing altruistic here, bees and flowers are taking advantage of each other in an evolutionary give and take. Granted, this mutual exploitation has been fine-tuned in order to avoid disastrous imbalances. Plants can’t afford giving away too much pollen but can’t risk being too stingy; bees would take all the pollen they could handle, but settle for what’s available as long (as) it’s worth their time and energy. Overly parsimonious plants and overly rapacious bees would collapse the relationship. Every plant-pollinator combination is an example of a mutually beneficial compromise; it’s natural selection (at) its best." (my emphasis)

I post these as usual in the event that you do not regularly look at the daily WEIT entries known as "Reader's Wildlife Photos."

Thanks to WEIT and Athayde Tonhasca Júnior.