11/18/2022 0 Comments Pollinate irest![]() ![]() And as an added bonus, about 40 percent of hoverflies bear larvae that prey on other insects, which thereby provide pest control services to the plant being pollinated. Some hoverflies have a modified mouthpart, also called a proboscis, made for siphoning nectar from long, narrow flowers. ![]() The roughly 6,000 species known worldwide are also called flower flies, for their association with flowers, and many are bee or wasp mimics. Flies are particularly important and efficient pollinators in environments where bees are less active, such as in alpine or arctic habitats.Īmong the pollinating flies, hoverflies, from the family Syrphidae, are the reigning champions. Nearly half of the 150 fly families visit flowers. Many flies prefer to feed on flowers, and in doing so, provide essential pollination services to the plants they visit. Without fig wasps, there would be a very low likelihood of figs in the wild. The most notable wasp pollinators are the fig wasps, which pollinate the tiny flowers inside the developing fig fruit.Researchers recently discovered this orchid releases a chemical cocktail that smells like a caterpillar infestation to lure the predatory wasps to their flowers. Two species of wasps, common wasps (V. vulgaris) and European wasps (V. germanica), provide pollination services to an orchid called the broad-leaved helleborine, also known as Epipactis helleborine.There is a hard-working pollinating group among the wasps, the subfamily Masarinae (also called pollen wasps), that are known to feed nectar and pollen to their young.There are, however, a few wasp species that do get the job done. Wasps lack the body hairs that bees have to carry pollen and so are not as well equipped for carting pollen from flower to flower. As an insect group, on the whole, they are generally thought to be less efficient pollinators than their bee cousins. ![]()
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