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<p><tt> </tt><font face="Arial">Why Are Bat Flowers Oversexed? <br>
from ScienceNOW Daily News </font><br>
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Flowers pollinated by bats have a bit of a reputation. Their male sex <br>
organs are especially big. And they "produce a ton of pollen" compared <br>
with other flowers, says biologist Nathan Muchhala of the University <br>
of Toronto in Canada. They need to, ecologists had assumed, because <br>
bats are sloppy pollinators. But a new study suggests the opposite: <br>
Bats are so good, it pays to pile on the pollen. <br>
Bats pollinate a few hundred species of plants in the New World. Most <br>
of these plants evolved from ancestors pollinated by hummingbirds. As <br>
part of that evolution, the plants traded gaily colored daytime <br>
flowers for dull evening blooms. The flowers visited by bats also <br>
produce about seven times more pollen than flowers catering to <br>
hummingbirds, but that increase has been hard to explain. <br>
One hypothesis has been that bats are just not very efficient <br>
pollinators: Perhaps they waste much of the pollen they pick up during <br>
their nectar runs by eating it or by grooming. But Muchhala, a postdoc <br>
in the lab of pollination biologist James Thomson, thought it was the <br>
hummingbirds that looked wasteful. <br>
</font><font face="Arial"><a href="http://ow.ly/1HHnd">http://ow.ly/1HHnd</a></font><font face="Arial"> </font><br>
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<font face="Arial">Deb Rudis</font><br>
<font face="Arial">USFWS</font><br>
<font face="Arial">Juneau, AK <br>
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