In animal-pollinated plants, two factors affecting pollen flow and seed production are changes in floral display and the availability of compatible mates. Changes in floral display may affect the number of pollinator visits and the availability of compatible mates will affect the probability of legitimate pollination and seed production. Distyly is a floral polymorphism where long-styled (pin) ...

Many rare and endemic species experience increased rates of self-fertilization and mating among close relatives as a consequence of existing in small populations within isolated habitat patches. Variability in self-compatibility among individuals within populations may reflect adaptation to local demography and genetic architecture, inbreeding, or drift. We use experimental hand-pollinations un...

Habitat loss and fragmentation influence species distributions and therefore ecological processes that depend upon them. Pollination may be particularly susceptible to fragmentation, as it depends on frequent pollinator movement. Unfortunately, most pollinators are too small to track efficiently which has precluded testing the hypothesis that habitat fragmentation reduces or eliminates pollen f...

Many widely known invasive plants are well integrated into native plant–pollinator networks. Typically, these invaders have entomophilous flowerswhich are visited by a diverse array of pollinators. The type of breeding system and the role that pollination services play in the reproductive success of invasive plants have, however, received little attention. We studied the breeding system and pol...

Exposed nectar presentation is a key trait in flowers specialized for pollination by short-tongued insects. We investigated the pollination of Satyrium microrrhynchum, a rare South African orchid in which nectar is secreted as droplets on long floral hairs ("lollipop hairs") at the mouth of a shallow labellum. Our observations indicate that this orchid is pollinated specifically by two insect s...

Self-incompatibility has been studied by using controlled pollination, pollen tube growth and PCR methods in the Iranian almond ‘Mamaei.’. Pollen tube growth and fruit set following self and cross-pollination treatments were evaluated. The percentage of initial and final fruit set was determined for each treatment at 30 and 60 days after controlled pollination. Pollen germination and pollen ...

European food-deceptive orchids generally flower early in spring and rely on naı̈ve pollinators for their reproduction. Some species however, flower later in the summer, when many other rewarding plants species are also in bloom. In dense flowering communities, deceptive orchids may suffer from competition for pollinator resources, or might alternatively benefit from higher community attractiven...

Pollination is a key ecosystem service as many crops but in particular, fruits and vegetables are partially dependent on pollinating insects to produce food for human consumption. Here we assessed how pollination services are delivered at the European scale. We used this assessment to estimate the relative contribution of wild pollinators to crop production. We developed an index of relative po...

Ongoing climatic changes have altered growing conditions for plants by limiting water availability and inducing unprecedented temperature increases, eliciting plant functional responses that compromise floral trait expression, reduce pollen production promote early self-pollination. In a controlled greenhouse study, of Collinsia heterophylla, an annual mixed-mated hermaphrodite, were grown unde...