Category Archives: Pollinators

What are the limits to pollinator diversity? A new article poses the question

1 Reply

The most globally significant groups of pollinators are well known and have been studied for a long time: bees and wasps, flies, butterflies and moths, birds, bats and beetles are all familiar to those of us with an interest in pollination ecology. However, every few years a new type of pollinator or a novel pollination system is described from nature or from the fossil record, or we add further examples of previously neglected pollinator groups such as cockroaches.

This begs the question: how much is there still to discover? How close are we to describing the full diversity of animals that act as pollen vectors? Can looking at the past help us to predict what we might find in the future? That’s the topic of a Perspective article that I was invited to write for the special issue of the Journal of Applied Entomology on the theme of  The Neglected Pollinators that I mentioned last month. It’s a subject that I’ve thought about a lot over the last few decades and it was great to get an opportunity to air some ideas and speculation.

The article is open access and you can download a copy by following the link in this reference:

Ollerton, J. (2024) What are the phylogenetic limits to pollinator diversity? Journal of Applied Entomology (in press)

Here’s the abstract:

Although huge progress has been made over the past 200 years in identifying the diversity of pollinators of angiosperms and other plants, new discoveries continue to be made each year, especially in tropical areas and in the fossil record. In this perspective article I address the following questions: Just how diverse are the pollinators and what are the phylogenetic limits to that diversity? Which other groups of animals, not currently known to regularly engage with flowers, might be found to be pollinators in the future? Can we predict, from the fossil record and from discoveries in under-researched parts of the world, which animal groups might turn out in the future to contain pollinators? I also discuss why adding to our knowledge of plant–pollinator interactions is important, but also stress that an incomplete knowledge may not be a bad thing if it means that remote, inaccessible and relatively pristine parts of the world remain that way.

The diverse nature of ‘nature writing’: in conversation with Jack Cornish and Ben Masters – 5th October

5 Replies

Why do authors write about ‘nature’? What are their motivations and how did they start their writing journey? Do they even recognise this label of ‘nature writer’?

These are just some of the questions I’ll be exploring with two other authors at the Market Harborough Book Festival on Saturday 5th October.

Jack Cornish is author of The Lost Paths, an exploration of the ancient pathways that have criss-crossed England and Wales since prehistoric times, the peoples who made them, and the landscapes through which they currently run. It’s a reminder of ‘just how precious these paths are, and have been, to the human story of this island’. I’ve only just started The Lost Paths, but what I’ve read so far is wonderful. Check out this recent review on The Great Outdoors site.

Ben Masters’ most recent book is The Flitting, an account of the final months of his relationship with his late father, a keen natural historian with a devotion to butterflies, and how they come to share ‘passions, lessons and regrets as they run out of time’. There’s a nice review of The Flitting by Mark Avery on his blog, and I have to agree with him, it’s a lovely book.

Coincidentally, earlier this year Mark wrote a review of the book that I will be discussing, my recent Birds & Flowers: An Intimate 50 Million Year Relationship, though I may also dip into Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society, because there’s at least one thing that unites the three of us as writers: a love of the poet John Clare! Ben discusses him at length in The Flitting, and indeed Clare provided the title of the book. Likewise, Jack name checks Clare in The Lost Paths, and I used the poet as the jumping off point for a couple of explorations of the importance and conservation of bees and other pollinators.

As well as discussing our roles as ‘nature writers’ we’ll be reading extracts from our books and answering audience questions. There will also be an opportunity to buy personally signed copies of our books. We look forward to seeing you there!