ArticleOecologia2018
Safe sites of pollen placement: a conflict of interest between plants and bees?
Article in Oecologia, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Dimorphic enantiostyly and its function for pollination by carpenter bees in a pollen-rewarding Caribbean bloodwort.American journal of botany · 2026Article
- Fine-tuning the buzz: comparing visitation frequency and pollination effectiveness in plant-pollinator networks.The New phytologist · 2026Article
- A modified petal and stamen dimorphism interact to enhance pollen placement by a buzz-pollinated flower.Annals of botany · 2025Article
- Pollen morphology for successful pollination dependent on pollinator taxa in a generalist plant: relationship with foraging behavior.Oecologia · 2023Article
- Article
- Hold tight or loosen up? Functional consequences of a shift in anther architecture depend substantially on bee body size.Oecologia · 2022Article
- Floral orientation affects outcross-pollen deposition in buzz-pollinated flowers with bilateral symmetry.American journal of botany · 2022Article
- Heteromorphic stamens are differentially attractive inAoB PLANTS · 2022Article
- Article
- Do flowers removed of either nectar or pollen attract fewer bumblebee pollinators? An experimental test inAoB PLANTS · 2021Article
- Bee-Mediated Selection Favors Floral Sex Specialization in a Heterantherous Species: Strategies to Solve the Pollen Dilemma.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Pollen grain size associated with pollinator feeding strategy.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Flower orientation in Gloriosa superba (Colchicaceae) promotes cross-pollination via butterfly wings.Annals of botany · 2020Article
- Pollinator effectiveness and importance between female and male mining bee (Biology letters · 2019Article
- Plant-pollinator interactions along the pathway to paternity.Annals of botany · 2019Review
- Nectar supplementation changes pollinator behaviour and pollination mode in Pedicularis dichotoma: implications for evolutionary transitions.Annals of botany · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Plant stigmas and bee pollinators are competitors for pollen. Pollen placed on a pollinator's body can be picked up by conspecific stigmas or it can be collected by the pollinator as food. Hypothetically, one solution is for pollen to be placed on 'safe sites' on the pollinator's body, sites where the pollinator cannot easily remove it, leaving the pollen for stigmas. We compared 14 sites on the bumblebee body in terms of the ability of the bee to groom off fluorescent power, a dust that may be thought of as analogous to pollen. The safest sites were along the midline of the dorsal thorax, the dorsal abdomen, and the ventral abdomen. Next, we counted how much pollen is borne on the 14 sites by bees visiting one nectariferous and three nectarless Pedicularis species. In the four species, only 7, 26, 28, and 30% of pollen found on the bees were on safe sites. Finally, we observed that the 14 sites were contacted by stigmas of the four Pedicularis species; none of the most contacted sites were safe sites. Across all four Pedicularis species, pollen is mainly positioned on sites of the bee body that were beneficial for both the plant and the bee, not on sites detrimental to either of them. Our analysis showed that the conflict of interest between flowers and bees can be solved by cooperation. Pedicularis pollen is placed where it strengthens the mutualism between plants and pollinators.
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