When someone says “pollinators,” the first thing that likely comes to mind is a bee, maybe a honey bee or a bumble bee, but typically not bats, birds, beetles or a plethora of other insects that are pollinators.
“Bees are a gateway bug. Once you realize that these honeybees are important that you realize there are over 20,000 species of other types of bees. And you realize that other kinds of bugs are important, and you realize that all these plants are blooming, all these trees are blooming, that you never realized before. It changes your relationship with the world.”
-Sam Comfort (“Queen Rearing Anarchy Style with Sam Comfort – 2019 Alternative Beekeepers Conference – YouTube,” 2019)
First off, pollinators are any animal that transports the grains of pollen (male reproductive part of a flower) to a female reproductive part allowing the formation of viable offspring otherwise known as seeds. Water, wind, and even humans are wonderful at doing this without actively being part of moving pollen too.Some plants do not need animal transport of pollen, like hemp Cannabis sativa, which is adapted for wind pollen dispersal.
Flowers attract animal pollinators by color and smell to encourage the pollinator to participate in moving pollen grains. There is an idea that certain colors and smells attract a certain group of pollinators. This idea is called pollinator syndrome. While not entirely scientific, they are a simplified rule of thumb for a researcher to work from.
One of the reasons understanding pollinators is so difficult is that they span many taxonomies (and of course taxonomies themselves can change). Dr. Jeff Ollerton (Ollerton, 2017) of the University of Northampton, United Kingdom does a wonderful job presenting a picture of what taxa are pollinators and gives an idea of the number of species in each group as well. This big-picture view gives us a good idea of which animals are pollinator, where to find them, and what plants they need for food and nesting sites. Table 1 from Ollerton’s interesting article is hyperlinked to the full pdf.
You can use Clemson University’s 4H manual (Manly, 1999) on entomology, to better understand the classes, families, and subclasses discussed above, which hopefully will give you a better overall idea of the true diversity of pollinators, and prove it’s not just honeybees doing the work
To break it down further and make it simple I’ve made a handout you can find here: Want to learn more about bugs? Check out the free class ‘Bugs 101: Insect-Human Interactions’ via Coursera (University of Alberta)
References:
Manly, D. (1999). Entomology. Clemson, South Carolina: Clemson Extension Service.
Ollerton, J. (2017). Pollinator Diversity: Distribution, Ecological Function, and Conservation. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 48(1), 353–376. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-ecolsys-110316-022919
Queen Rearing Anarchy Style with Sam Comfort – 2019 Alternative Beekeepers Conference – YouTube. (2019). In Youtube. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hisnSeLN9zk&t=2895s
University of Alberta. Bugs 101 -Insect-Human Interactions. Retrieved January 17, 2020, from Coursera website: https://www.coursera.org/learn/bugs-101/lecture/1qInd/00-01-welcome-to-bugs-101
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