Then she begins to vibrate violently, a behavior scientists call sonication. She “unhooks” her flying muscles from her wings so she can contract them without taking flight. The bee bites down at the base of the anther, leaving little marks called bee kisses. Most buzz-pollinated flowers are specialists that only offer pollen and they hide the grains at the bottom of tall, skinny anthers. Photo by Josh Cassidy/KQEDīumblebees forage for two food sources: nectar for a quick sugar rush to power their flights and pollen for protein. “It’s intriguing because these buzz-pollinated plants ask for a huge energy investment from the bees, but don’t give much back.”Ī bumblebee grooms her fur - and her tongue - to get at the pollen grains she vibrated free from the anthers. “The flower is almost like playing hard to get,” says Anne Leonard, a biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno who studies buzz pollination. The evolutionary strategy is baffling to scientists. In contrast, buzz-pollinated flowers encourage bees to eat the pollen directly and hope some grains will make it to another flower. The bee laps up the sweet reward, is dusted with pollen and passively delivers it to the next bloom. Most plants lure animal pollinators to spread these male gametes by producing sugary nectar. Plants need a way to get the pollen - basically sperm - to the female parts of another flower. Tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants need wild populations of buzz pollinators, such as bumblebees, to produce fruit. But it’s also critical to human agriculture. The strategy, called buzz-pollination, is risky. Buzz-pollinators bite down at the base of anther and vibrate until pollen grains shoot out the top. Buzz-pollinated flowers hide pollen grains deep inside their anthers, the long skinny male parts of the plant.
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