Plants have evolved a variety of mechanisms to disperse pollen. Among them, orchids have evolved a mechanism using pollination structures called pollinaria. Pollinaria include parts called pollinia that hold pollen sacs with the male gametes, and adhesive pads that adhere to insects and other pollinators. Some present-day beetles use orchids for nectar, and these beetles also disperse orchid pollinaria. But no fossil evidence has ever been found showing beetles in the evolutionary past pollinating orchids — until now. A new study identified the first fossil beetles dispersing pollinaria from orchids that were discovered in fossilized tree sap called amber. One was a hidden-snout beetle (subfamily Cryptorhynchinae) found in amber from the Dominican Republic. This Dominican specimen had pollinaria from an orchid described as Cylindrocites browni attached to its thorax. The other specimen was a toe-winged beetle (family Ptilodactylidae) that was found in amber from Mexico. This toe-winged beetle had pollinaria from an orchid described as Annulites mexicana attached to its mouthparts. The beetle in Dominican amber was in strata estimated to be from 20 to 45 million years old, and the beetle in Mexican amber was in strata estimated to be from 22 to 26 million years old. This new evidence shows that beetles may play a more important role in pollinating orchids than originally thought, and that they have been doing so for some 20 million years. https://entomologytoday.org/2016/08...les-pollinated-orchids-millions-of-years-ago/ Paper: http://ae.oxfordjournals.org/content/62/3/172
@ Plasma Inferno, I love the little gems you sprinkle around. I am sure you have seen the Hellstrom Chronicle? It is an old movie about the incredible feats of insects long before higher life forms appeared. Their very simplicity allows them to adapt to almost any environment. I found it both amazing and disturbing.
So... like... we shouldn't have sprayed the little bug-ers out of existence? Who could have foreseen....?
The problem does not lie in spraying the bugs. it lies in spraying the plants we and other herbivores also eat. The bugs will adapt but we can't eat the plants because we don't, and birds that eat insects will also be poisoned. As Hellstrom said; there are two species which are on the increase. Man because we can alter our environment, and the insects which can adapt to anything man does to the environment. DDT is a perfect example. http://www.panna.org/resources/ddt-story and http://scorecard.goodguide.com/chemical-groups/one-list.tcl?short_list_name=brpest
Considering how ancient flowers are, and how ancient beetles are, i suspect this goes back 100,000,000 years or more, not merely 20,000,000. flowers evolved to take advantage of insect pollination, rather than merely wind pollination (as, for example, the conifers, etc.)
I tend to agree. I base this on the evolution of carnivorous plants, disguised as flowers and producing aromatic "honey" to lure insects of various kinds, which suggests a very early symbiotic relationship between flowers and pollinating insects, which then gave rise to predatory plants, such as the Venus flytrap, an extremely sophisticated predatory plant, which may live up to 30 years. At such a long life-span evolution of such sophistication must have taken a very long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_flytrap
Thank you Write4U. No, I haven't, but I'm adding it to my watch list right away. Thank you for the recommendation! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
