[Pollinator] Fw: kpNewsletter: How do firebush flower mites travel?

[Laurie Davies Adams]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jan Clark" <jclark at aoc.gov>
To: <kw at coevolution.org>; <lda at coevolution.org>
Cc: "Dayna Lane" <dlane at aoc.gov>; <steve at thebeeworks.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 6:29 AM
Subject: Fwd: kpNewsletter: How do firebush flower mites travel?


I thought this was fascinating..... I actually have a small Hamelia patens
growing on my deck.... had never heard of it before I picked it up last yr.
(at Home Depot of all places - garden centers around here do NOT sell it).
I bring it in during the winter & let it go dormant....

happy holiday weekend to all - Jan

>>> "killerplants.com" <listmanager at killerplants.com> 08/31/05 11:08PM >>>
<<<<< How do firebush flower mites travel? >>>>>

The flowers of the firebush (Hamelia patens Jacquin) are reddish-orange,
small, and tubular. If pollinated, they are followed by a many-seeded
berry which ripens black. The flowers are transient things opening
around the middle of the night and wilting by midday.

Each flower has about twelve hours in which to shed and receive pollen
for reproduction. The flower is dependent upon a pollinator to aid the
short cycle. The flowers produce nectar to attract bees, butterflies,
and hummingbirds. In Costa Rica (and probably elsewhere), these
pollinators are not the only creatures to desire the nectar.

A flower mite, Proctolaelaps kirmsei, lives on and consumes the
resources, nectar and pollen, of firebush flowers. During the dark hours
after midnight, the tiny mites, about a half a millimeter long, consume
as much as 50 percent of the pollen. Before dawn, the flowers begin
producing nectar. Mites, bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds become
competitors for the sugary liquid.

Mid-morning the flowers stop producing nectar. The bees, butterflies,
and hummingbirds can fly to other flowers, but the mites are stuck with
quickly dwindling resources. The mites either have to find another
flower close by or look for transportation. One of the fastest modes is
the rufous-tailed hummingbird (Amazilia tzacatl) and the mites have only
a few seconds.

One or two will race up the bill of a feeding hummingbird and into the
nares (nostrils). The mites ride until the hummingbird visits another
firebush flower and, again, they have only seconds to disembark. The
mites leave the nares and race down the bill to the flower.

Firebush flowers do not produce a scent that humans can detect.
Hummingbirds are thought to have an even poorer sense of smell, but the
mites know when their transportation has reached the right flower.
Inside the nares, the mites are inundated with air moving into and out
of the hummer's lungs and they may detect an aroma that neither humans
nor hummingbirds can.

(Compiled from: "Mites and birds: diversity, parasitism, and
coevolution", H. Proctor and I. Owens, Tree, vol.15, No.9, September,
2000; "Stowaways on the Hummingbird Express", R.K. Colwell, Natural
History, 1985; and "The impact of nectar limitation in the shrub Hamelia
patens territorial behavior in the rufous-tailed hummingbird (Amazilia
tzacatl)", M.B. Neiman, Tropical Rainforest Ecology, Carleton College,
MN 1998-99)