5 ms·
Magnolias are so old that they're pollinated by beetles, not bees (2025)
- chabes 3mo agoA lot of plants aren’t pollinated by bees. There’s pollinator wasps, flies, moths, butterflies… even birds and bats are pollinators
- palata 3mo agoAnts as well
- Foobar8568 3mo agoYeah I was about to say ants with passion fruit flowers.
- williamdclt 3mo agomosquitoes too, though it pains me to give them credit for anything
- nkrisc 3mo agoTrue, all mosquitoes drink nectar, and only females of some species drink blood.
- twister2920 3mo agoand some species' females require a blood meal before laying eggs :(
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- broeng 3mo agoAnd olive trees have genders, with the male pollinating the surrounding females.
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo agoThat's pretty common in plants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioecy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dioecy
- rob74 3mo agoOne of those moths is this guy, who (in flight, not so much in still images) looks and sounds like a miniature hummingbird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummingbird_hawk-moth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummingbird_hawk-moth
- fyhn 3mo agoI noticed these for the first time earlier this summer. Incredible insects! They really do give a hummingbird impression.
- thaumasiotes 3mo agohttps://satwcomic.com/two-birds-in-the-hand https://satwcomic.com/two-birds-in-the-hand
- barrenko 3mo agoVery common around my mom's house.
- VMG 3mo agorare instance where the German name Taubenschwänzchen ('little dove-tail') is nicer than the English name
- rob74 3mo agoThat reminds me that people who hear the word for butterfly (Schmetterling) in German for the first time usually think it sounds extremely violent. Ok, then again, "butterfly" sounds slightly disgusting if you think about it. But TIL that they actually have a similar root: the "Schmetter-" doesn't come from smashing, but from "Schmetten", a word derived from the Slavic "smetana" (cream). Apparently butterflies got their name from the popular belief that witches could turn into butterflies to steal milk or cream (and probably also other dairy products?).
- 317070 3mo agoFor many people, it is the other way around. It is very remarkable that there is a bird, which looks so much like a big version of this butterfly! After all, in Europe these butterflies are commonplace, but I've never seen the American bird in my life.
- danielheath 3mo agoAnd... wolves? https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.4470 https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy....
- FerretFred 3mo agoI have to say that if we're also talking about wild grasses, my wire fox terrier is also a pollinator. He collects an incredible amount of seeds and burrs during his walkies investigations and I have to pick them out of his fur afterwards (risky because he gets annoyed easily).
- rantallion 3mo agoSeeds are not gametes. While your dog may help spread the seeds, they are not assisting in the sexual reproduction itself.
- aaron695 3mo ago[dead]
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoMy pawpaws (Asimina triloba) mainly need (house) flies to pollinate. They make their flowers look like meat. I have a couple 100 foot rows of them, it's tricky to get good pollination.
- adm4 3mo agothe little beetle that could, and pawpaw's are self-incompatible. -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba#Pollination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba#Pollination
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoplenty of sap beetles around here, but i don't tend to see them on my pawpaws. they come around later season when my raspberries ripen would not rule out the cash crop farming on both sides of me from doing a number on the insects, though i seem to have plenty overall. unfortunately an excessive number of japanese beetles
- mallomarmeasle 3mo agoMy grandpappy told me that if you want a good crop of pawpaws you have to hang a dead cat in the tree. I think dead cats were in greater supply back in his day. Fascinating flowers for a tree though. Red meat color and odor only a fly could love. For anyone that’s close, go to the upcoming Ohio Pawpaw festival! https://ohiopawpawfest.com/ https://ohiopawpawfest.com/
- cmrdporcupine 3mo agoYeah I've wondered about just really nasty ass stinky fresh manure around the base of each tree. That would attract flies. Probably a flush of nitrogen at exactly the wrong time tho. Most plants respond to that by pushing excess green growth instead of flowering and fruit set.
- pfdietz 3mo agoSolid cow manure is really low in nitrogen, though, and maybe 90% is organic N which is released slowly. Maybe you meant fresher manure.
- pfdietz 3mo agoAnd by wind. The major staple crops are all wind pollinated.
- HughParry 3mo agoIf you push me into a bush then you'll make me a pollinator as well
- tempestn 3mo agoWe've got a fly-pollinated bush in our yard. Smells like rotting death when it's wet to attract them. (I did not plant it...)
- palata 3mo agoPretty sure I see many bees on Magnolias.
- globular-toast 3mo agoMy magnolia is the only thing that seems to attract honeybees, which I rarely see otherwise. The article doesn't seem to justify the "not bees" part, though. I'd imagine bees can pollinate them too.
- Diogenesian 3mo agoRight, the whole point of bees as insect pollinators (reflecting that they are recent evolutionary line) is that they are by a healthy margin the most intelligent arthropod. They will inspect then successfully pollinate anything floral over a wide geographic range. Most insect pollinators are instinctually tied to certain species/families.
- actionfromafar 3mo agoThanks, I never thought about bees like that. They certainly can use many types of flowers, as evidenced by various sorts of honey. Nitpick: some spiders are pretty darn intelligent and even seem to dream when they sleep, apparently.
- TacticalMalice 3mo agoThe earliest angiosperms appeared in the Cretaceous. This is after the appearance of Hymenoptera (Jurassic) and Diptera (Triassic). While a nice story, this needs additional substantiation. An alternative explanation is likelier imo.
- adrian_b 3mo agoThe early Hymenoptera were predatory, like wasps still are. Bees, which feed on pollen and nectar from plant flowers, instead of catching other insects, have evolved much later from wasp-like Hymenoptera, after angiosperms were already widespread. So the timeline fits into the story.
- xipho 3mo ago> were predatory ... ? Were they? Sawflies are herbivores, and are at minimum share a common ancestor with those that were not herbivores. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982217300593 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...
- adrian_b 3mo agoFrom your link, the bees are nested within Crabronidae, most of which are predatory wasps, e.g. the beewolves. So there is no doubt that the immediate ancestors of bees were predatory, like also their more distant ancestors that they share with ants and other kinds of wasps. Hymenoptera has split early into two branches, one leading to wasps and the other to sawflies. Most sawflies, as you say, feed on plants. So the question is what kind of food was used by the common ancestor of all Hymenoptera, given that from that ancestor there are two descendant groups, one predatory and one phytophagous (plant-eating). There is no certain evidence for this, but there are arguments that it is much more likely that the common ancestor was predatory and the sawflies have evolved from that into plant-eating insects. There are two arguments for this. One is that eating plants is more difficult for animals and all plant-eating animals had to develop special abilities in order to digest plants. Because of this there are a lot of examples among animal groups where the ancestors of a group were predatory, and only some of their descendants have succeeded to transition to feeding on plants. There are much fewer examples of plant-eating animals that have become predatory again, because once some animals become able to eat plants, they normally have access to a much more abundant source of food than the predatory animals, so reverting to a predatory lifestyle would be disadvantageous. Humans are one of the few exceptions, because their ability to throw weapons at a distance has allowed them to become extremely successful hunters. The second argument is that Hymenoptera form one of the two branches of Holometabola, the insects with complete metamorphosis. For the orders of insects that belong to the other branch of Holometabola, e.g. for beetles, wherever there is reasonable certainty about the lifestyle of the ancestors, they were also predatory, so it is more likely that the common ancestor of all Holometabola was also predatory.
- tmoertel 3mo agoMountain mints are also pollinated by beetles—and a bazillion other critters. They are extraordinary pollinator magnets. Beetles, bees, flies, wasps, mosquitos (!), moths, butterflies, ... A recent study of just a few mountain mint species (https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2024.2411072 https://doi.org/10.1080/00222933.2024.2411072) found that they attracted a crazy variety of pollinators. Check the supplementary materials for the full list.
- Sharlin 3mo agoMosquitoes (which are flies) don’t really deserve the exclamation mark, given that the males of all mosquito species live exclusively on nectar, with the females (of most but not all species) augmenting their diet with animal protein in order to produce eggs. The long, thin proboscis originally evolved for nectar drinking like in many other insects (and some birds!); its use for sucking animal blood was a later adaptation.
- mvidal01 3mo agoI have mountain mint growing in my yard and every pollinator imaginable goes to that plant.
- HelloMcFly 3mo agoI have slender mountain mint and it used to be a popular pollinator spot... until I planted figwort. Never had anything get action like the figwort!
- vidarh 3mo agoI have spearmint in my garden, and the bees and butterflies are literally pushing each other out of the way to get at them some days.
- cachius 3mo agoLiving fossils, like Ginkos And Equisetum/Horsetail/Schachtelhalm
- Mistletoe 3mo agoMagnolia make one of my favorite smells on earth. We have a huge one in front of a house we have moved away from and back to many times. The intoxicating smell when I mow the leaves and seeds beneath it is something I want to keep forever. I collected the red seeds and put them in a bottle with alcohol and I go back and smell it often to remember. The house flooded four days before closing on selling it, so we got more time with the house. We are wrapping that up and we will say goodbye to that old house, and it’s now quite huge magnolia in the front. I never knew the flowers were pollinated by beetles or why the scent smelled like that. I collected seeds last year and cold stratified a bunch all winter in our fridge. I planted them this spring and 7 survived the process and are now growing in red cups in my new house. https://imgur.com/a/OAHQCW4 https://imgur.com/a/OAHQCW4
- mvidal01 3mo agoSome insects gather nectar from a flower and don't pollinate the flower. This is called nectar robbing. See https://www.backyardecology.net/not-all-flower-visitors-are-pollinators/ https://www.backyardecology.net/not-all-flower-visitors-are-...
- baxtr 3mo agoWhat’s the best security control against this robbery?!
- adm4 3mo agogreat idea... How do you make sure there is an exchange.
- rags2riches 3mo agoThis is what the shape of the flower and its placement of the stamen and pistils are all about.
- cyberjar 3mo agoIf it becomes a problem I would imagine that most victim plants will evolve certain defence mechanisms. For example, some insects will simply chew through flowers to reach the nectar stores - so I think in such cases a flower would just evolve a tougher skin, or secrete something that deters insects from doing that.
- teh_klev 3mo agoThese are the original articles this re-heat was created from: - https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/magnolias-beetle-pollination https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/magnolias-be... - https://gardens.si.edu/learn/blog/the-botany-of-magnolias/ https://gardens.si.edu/learn/blog/the-botany-of-magnolias/
- mark_something 3mo agoThanks. The first article has more info, e.g. that those beetles are flightless. But that makes me suspect that they spend a lot of time on one tree, only pollinating that tree, which would be pointless because there is no exchange of genes.
- cubefox 3mo agoThe second article goes into more detail: > To minimize the risk of self-pollination, which can result in inbreeding depression and recessive mutations, the flowers open in the morning and the stigmas are receptive to pollen that is brought to them by foraging beetles throughout the day. When evening comes, the innermost tepals close around the carpel and trap the pollinating beetle. While the tepals are closed, the beetle deposits pollen all over the receptive stigmas. The stigmas then close and the anthers become active, covering the same beetle in fresh pollen so that when the sepals open in the morning, it will fly out and find another flower to pollinate. This precise delay in flower function helps to ensure cross pollination.
- lorreyfum 3mo ago[flagged]
- cyberjar 3mo agoThe giant arum is another example of beetle pollinated flowers. It smells of manure so attracts manure-loving beetles. With more traditional pollinators, I've always found that a fascinating example of bee pollination that does not involve the plant taking advantage of the insect drinking its nectar is Ophrys Apifera, which has a distinct bee-shape silhouette and relies on the mating instincts of male bees in order to pollinate.
- lopis 3mo agoInteresting. I never thought worker bees retained any mating instincts.
- geonineties 3mo agoAFAIK worker bees are female. Drones are male and don't actually gather any honey, but just go around looking for a queen to mate with.
- greenlimetea 3mo ago"Drop the tle, it's cleaner."