Lizards, mice, bats and other vertebrates are important pollinators, too

Study reviews the global importance of vertebrate pollinators for plant reproduction

Date:  April 4, 2018

Source:  Ecological Society of America

Bees are not the only animals that carry pollen from flower to flower. Species with backbones, among them bats, birds, mice, and even lizards, also serve as pollinators. Although less familiar as flower visitors than insect pollinators, vertebrate pollinators are more likely to have co-evolved tight relationships of high value to the plants they service, supplying essential reproductive aid for which few or no other species may substitute.

In plants known to receive flower visitations from vertebrates, fruit and seed production drops 63 percent, on average, when the larger animals, but not insects, are experimentally blocked from accessing the plants, ecologists report in the March cover study for the Ecological Society of America's journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment.

Fabrizia Ratto and colleagues reviewed 126 such animal exclusion experiments to get an idea of how dependent wild plants are on animals with backbones for reproduction. The researchers selected published studies that quantified pollination through the subsequent growth of fruit or seeds.

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