Evolution need not be a lonely path. Some insects and plants have evolved in partnership with each other, sharing an attraction that’s can be almost electric.

Honey bees are good pollinators – but they may pose a threat to endangered plant species.

Pollinator specificity facilitates reproductive isolation among plants, and mechanisms that generate specificity influence species boundaries. Wang et al. use two varieties of an Asian fig tree, Ficus semicordata, that are host to two different Ceratosolen wasp pollinators to investigate mechanisms of pollinator specificity among sympatric, closely related taxa. They find that only one of the wasps [...]

Get the paper FREE If you’re a plant who wants to reproduce should you have more flowers? I thought the answer might simply be a matter of the cost of producing more flowers against the chances of attracting more insects for pollination. Effects of floral display size on male and female reproductive success in Mimulus [...]

Normally a year after they’re published issues of Annals of Botany become free to access. There’s a symposium “Pollinators as drivers of plant speciation” [PDF] coming up at the South African Association of Botanists Conference next week, so we’ve moved our own special issue on Plant Mating Systems to Free Access a bit earlier than [...]

Australian Chiloglottis orchids employ novel semiochemicals called ‘chiloglottones’ to sexually attract their specific male wasp pollinators. Falara et al. show that chiloglottone is only produced in specific floral tissues, the labellum calli and sepals. They also determine that chiloglottone production requires continuous sunlight, and by conducting light-treatment experiments they show the optimal wavelength of light to [...]

The pollination biology of very few Chloraeinae orchids has been studied to date, and little is known about pollinator behaviour. Sanguinetti et al. study the floral features, breeding system and pollinator behaviour in Chloraea membranacea, one of the few non-Andean species in the group. They find that this species is nectarless, displays labellar projections involved in [...]