[Pollinator] Bat pollination story

[Deborah_Rudis at fws.gov]

Why Are Bat Flowers Oversexed?
   from ScienceNOW Daily News

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



Deb Rudis
USFWS
Juneau, AK

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