59 Pollination

Pollination is the transfer of pollen from a male part of a plant to a female part of a plant, later enabling fertilisation and the production of seeds, most often by an animal or by wind. Pollinating agents are animals such as insects, birds, and bats; water; wind; and even plants themselves, when self-pollination occurs within a closed flower. Pollination often occurs within a species. When pollination occurs between species it can produce hybrid offspring in nature and in plant breeding work.

The term pollen source is often used in the context of beekeeping and refers to flowering plants as a source of pollen for bees or other insects. Bees collect pollen as a protein source to raise their brood. For the plant, the pollinizer, this can be an important mechanism for sexual reproduction, as the pollinator distributes its pollen. Few flowering plants self-pollinate; some can provide their own pollen, but require a pollinator to move the pollen; others are dependent on cross pollination from a genetically different source of viable pollen, through the activity of pollinators. One of the possible pollinators to assist in cross-pollination are honeybees. The article below is mainly about the pollen source from a beekeeping perspective.

Anemophily or wind pollination is a form of pollination whereby pollen is distributed by wind. Almost all gymnosperms are anemophilous, as are many plants in the order Poales, including grasses, sedges, and rushes. Other common anemophilous plants are oaks, pecans, pistachios, sweet chestnuts, alders and members of the family Juglandaceae. Approximately 12% of plants across the globe are benefited by anemophily, including cereal crops like rice and corn and other prominent crop plants like wheat, rye, barley, and oats. In addition, many pines, spruces, and firs are wind-pollinated, and people rely on these hardwood trees for their survival.

Apertures are areas on the walls of a pollen grain, where the wall is thinner and/or softer. For germination it is necessary that the pollen tube can reach out from the inside of the pollen grain and transport the sperm to the egg deep down in the pistil. The apertures are the places where the pollen tube is able to break through the pollen wall.

An apiary is a location where beehives of honey bees are kept. Apiaries come in many sizes and can be rural or urban depending on the honey production operation. Furthermore, an apiary may refer to a hobbyist's hives or those used for commercial or educational usage. It can also be a wall-less, roofed structure, similar to a gazebo which houses hives.

Bee pollen is a ball or pellet of field-gathered flower pollen packed by worker honeybees, and used as the primary food source for the hive. It consists of simple sugars, protein, minerals and vitamins, fatty acids, and a small percentage of other components. Also called bee bread, or ambrosia, it is stored in brood cells, mixed with saliva, and sealed with a drop of honey. Bee pollen is harvested as food for humans and marketed as having various, but yet unproven, health benefits.

Beekeeping is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in man-made hives, by humans. Most such bees are honey bees in the genus Apis, but other honey-producing bees such as Melipona stingless bees are also kept. A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produce, to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or "bee yard".

Buzz pollination or sonication is a technique used by some bees, such as solitary bees to release pollen which is more or less firmly held by the anthers. The anthers of buzz-pollinated plant species are typically tubular, with an opening at only one end, and the pollen inside is smooth-grained and firmly attached. With self-fertile plants such as tomatoes, wind may be sufficient to shake loose the pollen through pores in the anther and accomplish pollination. Visits by bees may also shake loose some pollen, but more efficient pollination of those plants is accomplished by a few insect species who specialize in sonication or buzz pollination.

Carrion flowers, also known as corpse flowers or stinking flowers, are flowers that emit an odor that smells like rotting flesh. Carrion flowers attract mostly scavenging flies and beetles as pollinators. Some species may trap the insects temporarily to ensure the gathering and transfer of pollen.

Chasmogamy, is a plant reproductive mechanism in which pollination occurs in chasmogamous flowers. Chasmogamous flowers are commonly showy with open petals encircling exposed reproductive parts. Chasmogamous stems from Greek for "open marriage", named after the open arrangement of floral structures. Once chasmogamous flowers have reached maturity, they unfurl and their stamens and/or style are made available for pollination. Although some plant species possess self-fertilizing chasmogamous flowers, most chasmogamous flowers are cross-pollinated by biotic or abiotic agents.

The column, or technically the gynostemium, is a reproductive structure that can be found in several plant families: Aristolochiaceae, Orchidaceae, and Stylidiaceae.

Distyly is a type of heterostyly in which a plant demonstrates reciprocal herkogamy. This breeding system is characterized by two separate flower morphs, where individual plants produce flowers that either have long styles and short stamens, or that have short styles and long stamens. However, distyly can refer to any plant that has two morphs if at least one of the following characteristics between flowers produced by different plants is true; there is a difference in style length, filament length, pollen size or shape, or the surface of the stigma. Most distylous plants are self-incompatible so they cannot fertilize ovules in their own flowers. Specifically these plants exhibit intra-morph self-incompatibility, flowers of the same style morph are incompatible.

Entomophily or insect pollination is a form of pollination whereby pollen of plants, especially but not only of flowering plants, is distributed by insects. Flowers pollinated by insects typically advertise themselves with bright colours, sometimes with conspicuous patterns leading to rewards of pollen and nectar; they may also have an attractive scent which in some cases mimics insect pheromones. Insect pollinators such as bees have adaptations for their role, such as lapping or sucking mouthparts to take in nectar, and in some species also pollen baskets on their hind legs. This required the coevolution of insects and flowering plants in the development of pollination behaviour by the insects and pollination mechanisms by the flowers, benefiting both groups.

Pollination of fruit trees is required to produce seeds with surrounding fruit. It is the process of moving pollen from the anther to the stigma, either in the same flower or in another flower. Some tree species, including many fruit trees, do not produce fruit from self-pollination, so pollinizer trees are planted in orchards.

Fertilisation or fertilization, also known as generative fertilisation, syngamy and impregnation, is the fusion of gametes to give rise to a new individual organism or offspring and initiate its development. Processes such as insemination or pollination which happen before the fusion of gametes are also sometimes informally called fertilization. The cycle of fertilisation and development of new individuals is called sexual reproduction. During double fertilisation in angiosperms the haploid male gamete combines with two haploid polar nuclei to form a triploid primary endosperm nucleus by the process of vegetative fertilisation.

Floral scent or flower scent is composed of all the volatile organic compounds (VOCs), or aroma compounds, emitted by floral tissue. Floral scent is also referred to as aroma, fragrance, floral odour or perfume. Flower scent of most flowering plant species encompass a diversity of VOCs, sometimes up to several hundred different compounds. The primary functions of floral scent are to deter herbivorous and especially florivorous insects, and to attract pollinators. Floral scent is one of the most important communication channels mediating plant-pollinator interactions, along with visual cues.

A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants. The biological function of a flower is to facilitate reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs. Flowers may facilitate outcrossing resulting from cross pollination or allow selfing when self pollination occurs.

Flower constancy or pollinator constancy is defined as the tendency of individual pollinators to exclusively visit certain flower species or morphs within a species, bypassing other available flower species that could potentially be more rewarding. Flower constancy is different from other types of insect specialization such as innate preferences for certain colors or flower types, or the tendency of pollinators to visit the most rewarding and abundant flowers.

The flowering plants, also known as Angiospermae, or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants, with 64 orders, 416 families, approximately 13,000 known genera and 300,000 known species. Like gymnosperms, angiosperms are seed-producing plants. They are distinguished from gymnosperms by characteristics including flowers, endosperm within their seeds, and the production of fruits that contain the seeds. Etymologically, angiosperm means a plant that produces seeds within an enclosure; in other words, a fruiting plant. The term comes from the Greek words angeion and sperma (seed)

For bees, their forage or food supply consists of nectar and pollen from blooming plants within flight range. The forage sources for honey bees are an important consideration for beekeepers. In order to determine where to locate hives for maximum honey production and brood one must consider the off-season. If there are no honey flows the bees may have to be fed. Bees that are used for commercial pollination are usually fed in the holding yards. Forage is also significant for pollination management with other bee species. Nectar contains sugars that are the primary source of energy for the bees' wing muscles and for heat for honey bee colonies for winter. Pollen provides the protein and trace minerals that are mostly fed to the brood in order to replace bees lost in the normal course of life cycle and colony activity.

Frequency-dependent foraging is defined as the tendency of an individual to selectively forage on a certain species or morph based on its relative frequency within a population. Specifically for pollinators, this refers to the tendency to visit a particular floral morph or plant species based on its frequency within the local plant community, even if nectar rewards are equivalent amongst different morphs. Pollinators that forage in a frequency-dependent manner will exhibit flower constancy for a certain morph, but the preferred floral type will be dependent on its frequency. Additionally, frequency-dependent foraging differs from density-dependent foraging as the latter considers the absolute number of certain morphs per unit area as a factor influencing pollinator choice. Although density of a morph will be related to its frequency, common morphs are still preferred when overall plant densities are high.

In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants formed from the ovary after flowering.

Gorteria is a genus of small annual herbaceous plants or shrubs, with 8 known species, that is assigned to the daisy family. Like in almost all Asteraceae, the individual flowers are 5-merous, small and clustered in typical heads, and are surrounded by an involucre, consisting of in this case several whorls of bracts, which are merged at their base. In Gorteria, the centre of the head is taken by relatively few bisexual and sometimes also male, yellow to orange disc florets, and is surrounded by one complete whorl of 5–14 infertile cream to dark orange ray florets, sometimes with a few ray florets nearer to the centre. None, some or all of them may have darker spots at their base. The fruits remain attached to their common base when ripe, and it is the entire head that breaks free from the plant. One or few seeds germinate inside the flower head which can be found at the foot of plants during their first year. The species flower between August and October, except for G. warmbadica that blooms mostly in May and June. The species of the genus Gorteria can be found in Namibia and South Africa.

Hand pollination, also known as mechanical pollination is a technique that can be used to pollinate plants when natural or open pollination is either undesirable or insufficient. This method of pollination is done by manually transferring pollen from the stamen of one plant to the pistil of another. This is often done with a cotton swab or small brush, but can also be done by removing the petals from a male flower and brushing it against the stigmas of female flowers, or by simply shaking flowers in the case of bisexual flowers, such as tomatoes. Common reasons for choosing this method include the lack of pollinators, keeping control of cross-pollination between varieties grown together, and creating specific hybrids. Examples of this are vanilla plants, which are transported to areas where its natural pollinator doesn't exist, or plants grown in greenhouses, urban areas, or with a cover to control pests, where natural pollinators cannot reach them. Pollinator decline and the concentrated pollination needs of monoculture can also be a factor. However, these are not the only reasons, and variable techniques for hand-pollination have arisen for many specialty crops. For instance, hand-pollination is used with date palms to avoid wasting space and energy growing sufficient male plants for adequate natural pollination. Because of the level of labor involved, hand-pollination is only an option on a small scale, used chiefly by small market gardeners and owners of individual plants. On large-scale operations, such as field crops, orchards, or commercial seed production, honeybees or other pollinators are a more efficient approach to pollination management. Despite this, hand-pollination is a fairly widespread practice. Pears grown in Hanyuan County, China have been hand-pollinated since the 1980s, because they can't be pollinated with other varieties that have different flowering times; also, lice infestation requires the use of many insecticide sprays, which causes local beekeepers to refuse to lend beehives.

Heterostyly is a unique form of polymorphism and herkogamy in flowers. In a heterostylous species, two or three morphological types of flowers, termed "morphs", exist in the population. On each individual plant, all flowers share the same morph. The flower morphs differ in the lengths of the pistil and stamens, and these traits are not continuous. The morph phenotype is genetically linked to genes responsible for a unique system of self-incompatibility, termed heteromorphic self-incompatibility, that is, the pollen from a flower on one morph cannot fertilize another flower of the same morph.

Homogamy is used in biology in four separate senses:Inbreeding can be referred to as homogamy. Homogamy refers to the maturation of male and female reproductive organs at the same time, which is also known as simultaneous or synchronous hermaphrodism and is the antonym of dichogamy. Many flowers appear to be homogamous but some of these may not be strictly functionally homogamous, because for various reasons male and female reproduction do not completely overlap. In the daisy family, the flower heads are made up of many small flowers called florets, and are either homogamous or heterogamous. Heterogamous heads are made up of two types of florets, ray florets near the edge and disk florets in the center. Homogamous heads are made up of just one type of floret, either all ray florets or all disk florets. Homogamy can be used as a form of choosing a mate based on characteristics that are wanted in a sexual partner.

Hydrophily is a fairly uncommon form of pollination whereby pollen is distributed by the flow of waters, particularly in rivers and streams. Hydrophilous species fall into two categories: (i) Those that distribute their pollen to the surface of water. e.g. Vallisneria's male flower or pollen grain are released on the surface of water, which are passively carried away by water currents; some of them eventually reach the female flower (ii) Those that distribute it beneath the surface. e.g. seagrasses in which female flower remain submergered in water and pollen grains are released inside the water.

In evolutionary biology, mimicry in plants is where a plant organism evolves to resemble another organism physically or chemically, increasing the mimic's Darwinian fitness. Mimicry in plants has been studied far less than mimicry in animals, with fewer documented cases and peer-reviewed studies. However, it may provide protection against herbivory, or may deceptively encourage mutualists, like pollinators, to provide a service without offering a reward in return.

Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists, which in turn provide herbivore protection. Common nectar-consuming pollinators include mosquitoes, hoverflies, wasps, bees, butterflies and moths, hummingbirds, honeyeaters and bats. Nectar plays a crucial role in the foraging economics and evolution of nectar-eating species; for example, nectar foraging behavior is largely responsible for the divergent evolution of the African honey bee, A. m. scutellata and the western honey bee.

Nectar guides are markings or patterns seen in flowers of some angiosperm species, that guide pollinators to their rewards. Rewards commonly take the form of nectar, pollen, or both, but various plants produce oil, resins, scents, or waxes. Such patterns also are known as "pollen guides" and "honey guides", though some authorities argue for the abandonment of such terms in favour of floral guides.

Nectar robbing is a foraging behavior utilized by some organisms that feed on floral nectar. "Nectar robbers" usually feed from holes bitten in flowers, rather than by entering through the flowers' natural openings. Often, nectar robbers avoid contact with the floral reproductive structures, and therefore do not facilitate plant reproduction via pollination. Because many species that act as pollinators also act as nectar robbers, nectar robbing is considered to be a form of exploitation of plant-pollinator mutualism.

The term oligolecty is used in pollination ecology to refer to bees that exhibit a narrow, specialized preference for pollen sources, typically to a single family or genus of flowering plants. The preference may occasionally extend broadly to multiple genera within a single plant family, or be as narrow as a single plant species. When the choice is very narrow, the term "monolecty" is sometimes used, originally meaning a single plant species, but recently broadened to include examples where the host plants are related members of a single genus. The opposite term is polylectic, and refers to species that collect pollen from a wide range of species. The most familiar example of a polylectic species is the domestic honey bee.

"Open pollination" and "open pollinated" refer to a variety of concepts in the context of the sexual reproduction of plants. Generally speaking, the term refers to plants pollinated naturally by birds, insects, wind, or human hands.

Ornithophily or bird pollination is the pollination of flowering plants by birds. This sometimes coevolutionary association is derived from insect pollination (entomophily) and is particularly well developed in some parts of the world, especially in the tropics, Southern Africa, and on some island chains. The association involves several distinctive plant adaptations forming a "pollination syndrome". The plants typically have colourful, often red, flowers with long tubular structures holding ample nectar and orientations of the stamen and stigma that ensure contact with the pollinator. Birds involved in ornithophily tend to be specialist nectarivores with brushy tongues and long bills, that are either capable of hovering flight or light enough to perch on the flower structures.

In seed plants, the ovule is the structure that gives rise to and contains the female reproductive cells. It consists of three parts: the integument, forming its outer layer, the nucellus, and the female gametophyte in its center. The female gametophyte — specifically termed a megagametophyte— is also called the embryo sac in angiosperms. The megagametophyte produces an egg cell for the purpose of fertilization.

Petals are modified leaves that surround the reproductive parts of flowers. They are often brightly colored or unusually shaped to attract pollinators. Together, all of the petals of a flower are called corolla. Petals are usually accompanied by another set of modified leaves called sepals, that collectively form the calyx and lie just beneath the corolla. The calyx and the corolla together make up the perianth. When the petals and sepals of a flower are difficult to distinguish, they are collectively called tepals. Examples of plants in which the term tepal is appropriate include genera such as Aloe and Tulipa. Conversely, genera such as Rosa and Phaseolus have well-distinguished sepals and petals. When the undifferentiated tepals resemble petals, they are referred to as "petaloid", as in petaloid monocots, orders of monocots with brightly colored tepals. Since they include Liliales, an alternative name is lilioid monocots.

Pollen is a powdery substance consisting of pollen grains which are male microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce male gametes. Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of coniferous plants. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte. Individual pollen grains are small enough to require magnification to see detail. The study of pollen is called palynology and is highly useful in paleoecology, paleontology, archaeology, and forensics. Pollen in plants is used for transferring haploid male genetic material from the anther of a single flower to the stigma of another in cross-pollination. In a case of self-pollination, this process takes place from the anther of a flower to the stigma of the same flower.

A pollen core is a core sample of a medium containing a stratigraphic sequence of pollen. Analysis of the type and frequency of the pollen in each layer is used to study changes in climate or land use using regional vegetation as a proxy. This analysis is conceptually comparable to the study of ice cores.

A pollen tube is a tubular structure produced by the male gametophyte of seed plants when it germinates. Pollen tube elongation is an integral stage in the plant life cycle. The pollen tube acts as a conduit to transport the male gamete cells from the pollen grain—either from the stigma to the ovules at the base of the pistil or directly through ovule tissue in some gymnosperms. In maize, this single cell can grow longer than 12 inches (30 cm) to traverse the length of the pistil.

Pollination management is the label for horticultural practices that accomplish or enhance pollination of a crop, to improve yield or quality, by understanding of the particular crop's pollination needs, and by knowledgeable management of pollenizers, pollinators, and pollination conditions.

A pollination network is a bipartite mutualistic network in which plants and pollinators are the nodes, and the pollination interactions form the links between these nodes. The pollination network is bipartite as interactions only exist between two distinct, non-overlapping sets of species, but not within the set: a pollinator can never be pollinated, unlike in a predator-prey network where a predator can be depredated. A pollination network is two-modal, i.e., it includes only links connecting plant and animal communities.

Pollination syndromes are suites of flower traits that have evolved in response to natural selection imposed by different pollen vectors, which can be abiotic or biotic, such as birds, bees, flies, and so forth. These trait includes flower shape, size, colour, odour, reward type and amount, nectar composition, timing of flowering, etc. For example, tubular red flowers with copious nectar often attract birds; foul smelling flowers attract carrion flies or beetles, etc.

Pollination traps or trap-flowers are plant flower structures that aid the trapping of insects, mainly flies, so as to enhance their effectiveness in pollination. The structures of pollination traps can include deep tubular corollas with downward pointing hairs, slippery surfaces, adhesive liquid, attractants, flower closing and other mechanisms.

A pollinator is an animal that moves pollen from the male anther of a flower to the female stigma of a flower. This helps to bring about fertilization of the ovules in the flower by the male gametes from the pollen grains.

Pollinator decline is the reduction in abundance of insect and other animal pollinators in many ecosystems worldwide that began being recorded at the end of the 20th century. Multiple lines of evidence exist for the reduction of wild pollinator populations at the regional level, especially within Europe and North America. Similar findings from studies in South America, China and Japan make it reasonable to suggest that declines are occurring around the globe. The majority of studies focus on bees, particularly honeybee and bumblebee species, with a smaller number involving hoverflies and lepidopterans.

A pollinium is a coherent mass of pollen grains in a plant that are the product of only one anther, but are transferred, during pollination, as a single unit. This is regularly seen in plants such as orchids and many species of milkweeds (Asclepiadoideae). Usage of the term differs: in some orchids two masses of pollen are well attached to one another, but in other orchids there are two halves each of which is sometimes referred to as a pollinium.

Pseudocopulation describes behaviors similar to copulation that serve a reproductive function for one or both participants but do not involve actual sexual union between the individuals. It is most generally applied to a pollinator attempting to copulate with a flower. Some flowers mimic a potential female mate visually, but the key stimuli are often chemical and tactile. This form of mimicry in plants is called Pouyannian mimicry.

RoboBee is a tiny robot capable of partially untethered flight, developed by a research robotics team at Harvard University. The culmination of twelve years of research, RoboBee solved two key technical challenges of micro-robotics. Engineers invented a process inspired by pop-up books that allowed them to build on a sub-millimeter scale precisely and efficiently. To achieve flight, they created artificial muscles capable of beating the wings 120 times per second.

A scopa is any of a number of different modifications on the body of a non-parasitic bee that form a pollen-carrying apparatus. In most bees, the scopa is simply a particularly dense mass of elongated, often branched, hairs on the hind leg. When present on the hind legs, the modified hairs are, at a minimum, on the tibia, but some bees also have modified hairs on the femur and/or trochanter. A few bees have, in addition to the leg hairs, many modified hairs on the ventral surface of the abdomen which are also used in pollen transport; there is one family of bees, Megachilidae, in which the modified leg hairs are absent, and the scopa is limited to the abdominal hairs. In the familiar honey bees and bumblebees, the scopa is replaced by the pollen basket (corbicula). Bees have other types of modified hairs used to collect pollen, floral oils, or other chemicals from plants, and these can be on the face, mouthparts, or the front or middle legs, but these are not scopae; the term is explicitly restricted to hairs used to transport pollen. There are some bees which transport pollen internally in the crop, and these lack a scopa, as do cleptoparasitic bees, which do not gather their own pollen.

In agriculture and gardening, seed saving is the practice of saving seeds or other reproductive material from vegetables, grain, herbs, and flowers for use from year to year for annuals and nuts, tree fruits, and berries for perennials and trees. This is the traditional way farms and gardens were maintained for the last 12,000 years.

Self-pollination is when pollen from the same plant arrives at the stigma of a flower or at the ovule. There are two types of self-pollination: in autogamy, pollen is transferred to the stigma of the same flower; in geitonogamy, pollen is transferred from the anther of one flower to the stigma of another flower on the same flowering plant, or from microsporangium to ovule within a single (monoecious) gymnosperm. Some plants have mechanisms that ensure autogamy, such as flowers that do not open (cleistogamy), or stamens that move to come into contact with the stigma. The term selfing that is often used as a synonym, is not limited to self-pollination, but also applies to other types of self-fertilization.

Sequential hermaphroditism is a type of hermaphroditism that occurs in many fish, gastropods, and plants. Sequential hermaphroditism occurs when the individual changes its sex at some point in its life. In particular, a sequential hermaphrodite produces eggs and sperm at different stages in life. Species that can undergo these changes from one sex to another do so as a normal event within their reproductive cycle that is usually cued by either social structure or the achievement of a certain age or size.

In botany, a spadix is a type of spike inflorescence having small flowers borne on a fleshy stem. Spadices are typical of the family Araceae, the arums or aroids. The spadix is typically surrounded by a leaf-like curved bract known as a spathe. For example, the "flower" of the well known Anthurium spp. is a typical spadix with a large colorful spathe.

Sporopollenin is one of the most chemically inert biological polymers. It is a major component of the tough outer (exine) walls of plant spores and pollen grains. It is chemically very stable and is usually well preserved in soils and sediments. The exine layer is often intricately sculptured in species-specific patterns, allowing material recovered from lake sediments to provide useful information to palynologists about plant and fungal populations in the past. Sporopollenin has found uses in the field of paleoclimatology as well. Sporopollenin is also found in the cell walls of several taxa of green alga, including Phycopeltis and Chlorella.

The stamen is the pollen-producing reproductive organ of a flower. Collectively the stamens form the androecium.

A theca refers to a sheath or a covering.

The eudicots, Eudicotidae or eudicotyledons are a clade of flowering plants mainly characterized by having two seed leaves upon germination. The term derives from Dicotyledons.

Wings of Life is a 2011 French-American nature documentary film directed by Louis Schwartzberg and released by Disneynature. It was released theatrically in France on 16 March 2011, with narration by Mélanie Laurent, and in home media markets across the US on 16 April 2013, with narration by Meryl Streep.

Zoophily is a form of pollination whereby pollen is transferred by animals, usually by invertebrates but in some cases vertebrates, particularly birds and bats, but also by other animals. Zoophilous species frequently have evolved mechanisms to make themselves more appealing to the particular type of pollinator, e.g. brightly colored or scented flowers, nectar, and appealing shapes and patterns. These plant-animal relationships are often mutually beneficial because of the food source provided in exchange for pollination.