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<H1 class=articleHeadline itemprop="headline"><NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">Unraveling the Pollinating Secrets of a Bee’s Buzz</NYT_HEADLINE></H1>
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<DIV class=nytmmSliderShow_credit>Mario Vallejo-Marín/University of
Stirling</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV class=nytmmSliderShow_credit>Anne Leonard/University of Nevada, Reno;
Stephen Buchmann, Daniel Papaj/University of
Arizona</DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<H6 class=byline sizset="16" sizcache06211790676151783="13">By <SPAN sizset="17" sizcache06211790676151783="13" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" itemprop="author creator"><SPAN itemprop="name">CARL
ZIMMER</SPAN></SPAN></H6></NYT_BYLINE>
<H6 class=dateline>Published: July 11, 2013 </H6>
<DIV class="shareTools shareToolsThemeClassic articleShareToolsTop shareToolsInstance" sizset="18" sizcache06211790676151783="13" jQuery17105819013896890174="6" data-shares="facebook,twitter,google,save,email,showall|Share,print,singlepage,reprints,ad" data-title="Unraveling the Pollinating Secrets of a Bee s Buzz" data-url="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/11/science/unraveling-the-pollinating-secrets-of-a-bees-buzz.html" data-description="Some 20,000 plant species rely on bees and other insects to shake their pollen out of secret tubes in order to survive.">
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<P itemprop="articleBody">Now is the time of year when bees buzz from flower to
flower. And for many plants, the very survival of their species depends on that
buzz. The flowers and the insects are joined together in a partnership of sound.
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<H6 class=credit>Nikola Solic/Reuters</H6>
<P class=caption>Bumblebees use their jaws and wings to shake pollen out of
flowers for food in a process called buzz pollination. </P></DIV>
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<P class=caption>Carl Zimmer </P></DIV></DIV>
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<P itemprop="articleBody">Bumblebees and other insects use buzzing to shake
pollen out of flowers for food — and they fertilize flowers along the way.
Scientists are exploring this acoustic feat to figure out how it has evolved,
and how it helps sustain our own food supply. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">Flowering plants typically reproduce by delivering
pollen to each other to fertilize seeds. Some flowers, like corn and ragweed,
cast their pollen to the wind. Others depend on animals like bees, bats or birds
to do the job. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">In many cases, these flowers lure an animal with the
reward of nectar. As the pollinator sips the plant’s sugary liquid, it gets
covered in pollen. It then travels to another flower in search of nectar and
delivers the grains. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">But 20,000 plant species — including familiar ones
like tomatoes, potatoes and cranberries — strike a different deal. They offer
pollen itself as food. These flowers don’t simply put the protein-rich pollen
out for any animal to eat, however. They keep it tucked deep inside special
tubes. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">Only bumblebees and certain other insects can get this
pollen out. In every case, the method is the same: the pollinator grabs the tube
with its jaws and starts vibrating hundreds of times a second. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">“It has to hold on, because the vibrations are so
strong that otherwise it could come flying off the flower,” says Mario
Vallejo-Marín of the University of Stirling in Scotland, who recently
co-authored a <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369526613000630?via=ihub">review</A>
of this behavior in the journal Current Opinion in Plant Biology. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">The animals produce a peculiar buzz with this
technique. “It sounds like a bee is giving you a raspberry,” said Stephen
Buchmann of the University of Arizona. In fact, they’re creating resonating
vibrations to loosen the pollen grains inside the tubes. “The bees are turning
themselves into living tuning forks,” said Dr. Buchmann. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">The bees cause the pollen grains to bounce up and down
in the tube and then gain so much energy they blast out in a cloud that coats
the bee. As it flies off, the insect gathers the grains out of its fur and tucks
most of them in wet clumps on its legs. It can later feed the clumps to larvae
back at its hive. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">“Fortunately, they’re a little bit messy,” said Dr.
Buchmann. When the bee visits another flower for a buzz, the extra pollen still
on its body can fertilize the plant. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">“It seems so unlikely — it would never work if you
were designing a plant,” said Anne Leonard, an ecologist at the University of
Nevada at Reno. “But it’s evolved many times.” </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">Dr. Leonard belongs to a small coterie of scientists
who are trying to understand the evolution of so-called buzz pollination. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">The transformation probably starts when a plant
species shifts to using pollen as a lure instead of nectar. If the flowers
simply put out the pollen like cookies on a table, an assortment of insects may
steal it and never pass on any grains to another flower. Growing a tube to store
away the pollen gives flowers control over who can eat it — and the power to
dust visitors with it, as well. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">Once flowers hide away their pollen this way, natural
selection favors bees that can give the flowers a harder shake. The harder the
bees shake, Dr. Vallejo-Marín and his colleagues <A href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00442-012-2535-1">have
found</A>, the more food they can bring home. Bees experience forces 30 times
greater than gravity as they buzz for pollen — near the limit of human
endurance. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">That can be too much of a good thing for the flower,
though. If a bee shakes out a plant’s entire pollen supply, it carries the
flower’s whole reproductive future with it. “The risk of a failure can be very
high,” said Dr. Vallejo-Marín. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">Dr. Vallejo-Marín suspects that this risk of failure
drove the continued evolution of the flowers. The shape of the tubes changed so
that even harder buzzing could only free a fraction of the pollen, meaning a
single greedy bee couldn’t exhaust a plant’s supply. Instead, the flowers have
enough pollen to spread over several bees, raising the odds that their genes
will get into the next generation. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">There’s a lot more that scientists have left to learn
about buzz pollination. Are flowers tuned to particular species of bees, for
example? Why can bumblebees buzz pollinate, but honeybees can’t? </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">Understanding buzz pollination is not just interesting
in its own right, but a matter of pressing importance. Bumblebees and other buzz
pollinators are suffering <A title="PNAS article about decline in bumblebees." href="http://www.pnas.org/content/108/2/662">worrying</A> <A title="Science article abstract." href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/339/6127/1611.full">declines</A>,
probably due to a combination of threats like diseases, pesticides and
destruction of their habitat. Their decline threatens the many wild plants that
have evolved to depend on their buzz. And a lot of food on our dining room table
depends on the buzz as well. </P>
<P itemprop="articleBody">“We could live just on wind-pollinated plants like
wheat and barley and millet,” said Dr. Buchmann, wearily listing each food, “but
it would be a pretty bland, nasty diet.”
</P><NOSCRIPT></NOSCRIPT><NYT_AUTHOR_ID>
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<P>Carl Zimmer’s “Matter” column appears on Thursdays. Follow him on Twitter: <A href="https://twitter.com/carlzimmer">@carlzimmer</A>.</P></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV>
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<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">Laurie Davies
Adams<BR>Executive Director<BR>Pollinator Partnership<BR>4</FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">23 Washington St.
5th Fl.<BR>San Francisco, CA 94111<BR>T: 415.362.1137<BR>F: 415.362.0176<BR><IMG SRC="cid:X.MA1.1373657900@aol.com" border=0 width=319 height=173 DATASIZE="27063" ID="MA1.1373657900" ></FONT><FONT lang=0 color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10"><BR>Follow up on <A href="http://twitter.com/#!/Pollinators">Twitter</A> and <A href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Pollinator-Partnership/48680445464">Facebook</A>!</FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>