You get to be a little bit of a detective because we are going to look at characteristics of flowers and fruits that allow us to respectively try to determine who their pollinator or what the dispersal agent is for the flower or fruit.

We'll talk about pollination syndromes, and that's this term that we think of as associated with diseases as having a syndrome.

That's because a disease is a specific set of symptoms that contribute to this overall syndrome, and it's characteristic of whatever the causal agent of that disease is.

If we think about pollination syndrome, we're thinking of sets of characteristics about a flower that would be associated with a particular pollinator.

That'll have to do with the biology of that pollinator.

The first one we'll look at is bees.

Bees have a set of specific physical characteristics that is going to allow flowers to co-evolve with them over time and allow those relationships to form and specialize bees as their pollinators.

One of those characteristics is bee eyesight.

Bees don't see the same part of the spectrum that we do.

This part that's highlighted here is the part that we see, the visible light for humans.

We see into the red and into violet.

So with that set of visual characteristics, this is how we would see this particular flower on the right.

It looks yellow, we can see the center of it, and everything radiates out from the center.

That flower is going to be trying to communicate different information to a bee.

It's going to try to tell that bee where the pollen is located, because it wants the bee to get that pollen and spread it to another flower of its same species.

There's an ultraviolet pigment here that's reflecting ultraviolet light that we don't see with our eyesight, but that bees do.

In a field of these flowers, it might be difficult to distinguish where the center of a flower was.

By highlighting the center of that flower, they make it a little bit easier for a bee to be efficient and to visit the center of the flower.

That way, it'll lose less pollen in areas that aren't the center.

Flowers and their pollinators have co-evolved over time to be able to communicate with each other or be adapted specifically for each other.

Some of these relationships are very specific, while other ones tend to be more general.

Because of the way that bees see, they tend to prefer blues and yellows, and also purples.

When you're looking for if a flower is bee pollinated, you can look for those colors, blue, yellow, and purple.

That doesn't mean that that flower is only pollinated by bees.

There are many flies that tend to like the same things as bees do or butterflies as well.

You can also look at characteristics of the flower rewards that would be offered.

In a flower that is bee pollinated, there's going to be both nectar and pollen as rewards.

Bees need both.

Some of that pollen is going to be fed to the bees young.

That's why bees go collect pollen, is because they need to feed it to their offspring.

Some organisms, most organisms that are pollinators, are just in it for the nectar to get that sugary reward that the flower offers, and they're incidental pollinators.

Bees tend to be more specific pollinators because they're actually trying to get at that pollen, so they try to get it all over them instead of just accidentally getting it on them.

Bees have branched hairs all over their body that make them much better pollinators.

Flowers that bees like tend to be scented, and the scents that they have are fresh, clean, and sweet, scents that we would like.

Bees have a pretty good sense of smell, and these are scents that we tend to attribute to like cleaning products or things that you would see on laundry detergent.

Smells like lavender are smells that bees would like.

Birds tend to be more similar to humans in characteristics that they might look for in a flower.

In our area, hummingbirds tend to be the most important bird pollinator.

If we were to look in more tropical environments or islands that are more predominantly bird-dominated, we might see a wider variety of bird pollinators.

So this, we're looking specific at hummingbird-related characteristics.

So hummingbirds are particularly attracted to red and pink, and birds in general will be more attracted to red.

Animals in general tend to be more attracted to red.

So we're looking for red and pink flowers in general.

Birds can still pollinate white flowers or other flower colors, but red and pink tend to be kind of more specialized toward birds.

However, unlike bees, most birds tend to have a pretty poor sense of smell.

So whenever a flower is producing smells or compounds that have smells, that takes energy.

So if that smell is being produced to communicate with other organisms, then they're using energy to do that.

A flower that is trying to attract a pollinator that's a bird doesn't need to produce a smell, because the bird is going to be using visual cues to locate that flower.

So producing smell compounds would be a waste, unless it has other pollinators too.

So if it's also trying to attract bees and butterflies, then it might produce a smell.

So just because a flower has a smell and also is red and pink doesn't mean it's not pollinated by birds.

It just means it might have multiple pollinators or potentially is butterfly pollinated, which caveat, I'm not going to talk about butterfly pollination because it overlaps with both bees and birds.

So bird-pollinated flowers, we're building our syndrome here.

They tend to be red and pink and unscented.

Here we can see some examples of hummingbirds pollinating flowers.

In the top left, that's a fuchsia.

That's my favorite example of a bird-pollinated flower because it is bright red with pinks and purples.

It's pendant, so that dangling kind of shape allows it to be more specialized for hummingbirds, which can hover.

Other animals that might be in there trying to get at the nectar that that flower is producing, this high value resource, might not be able to get into that pendant flower or to get to it.

So it's pendant, it's red and pink, it has some purples in there too, and it doesn't smell like anything.

So you go up and you smell a fuchsia and you got nothing.

So all of these flowers have another thing in common.

They are that kind of same part of the color spectrum and they are all this tubular shape, right?

There are these long tubes and you can think about why that is when you look at the pollinator who's pollinating them.

They have these long beaks with a tongue, right, that they can then stick even further in.

So having this long tube allows the flowers to sort of protect and sequester that nectar resource deep within the flower to try to allow fewer non-pollinating organisms to be able to get to it.

Red and pink flowers, unscented, with a tubular shape.

These are general characteristics that we associate with bird pollination.

For a reward, there's gonna be a lot of nectar.

Not all flowers will have nectar as a reward, but if you want to have a bird visit your flower, birds aren't trying to get the pollen.

The pollination is a kind of accidental step for most of them.

So they'll get the pollen dusted on the top of their head.

So if we have one of those tubular flowers, it will then have the anthers stick out here and the stigma might be even further out there.

So if a bird comes in, oh gosh, I'm gonna try to draw a bird here.

You know, a bird with this little dart shape is gonna come in to try to get at the nectar, which is down here deep in the flower, is going to put its bill down here, maybe put its little tongue out, try to get at that nectar, and it will hopefully have already visited another flower of the same type because they're specialized for this bird.

And it'll have pollen on its head that will then get picked up by the stigma.

Then as it goes deeper into the flower to get that nectar, it's already passed by and dropped off pollen here.

Then it puts its head deeper in to get more of that nectar resource.

And then this anther is going to deposit more pollen on the top of its head that it can then deliver to another flower.

So that tubular shape also helps get the pollen deposited on the pollinator.

Now let's look at bat pollination.

In our area, bats are mostly insectivorous.

They're not necessarily going to be pollinating a lot of the flowers.

But if we were to go into a more tropical area or even to the Southwest, we would see bats become a more prominent pollinator in those areas.

Here is an adorable bat doing a pollination service, just loving on this flower.

So bats are out at night.

They tend to like white flowers because white is going to be the most reflective surface at night.

It reflects the largest kind of span of wavelengths.

So it's reflecting all colors of light.

And so we get the most light reflectance off those white flowers.

Which will be ideal for nighttime because there's very low light.

The reward will be lots of nectar.

So much like birds, we are trying to draw those bats in for that food resource.

And then they become these sort of accidental pollinators by getting pollen all over their bodies.

If you're going to go for a night pollination or a night pollinator, then you have to be open at night.

So some flowers will close during the day.

Like daisies got their name, as far as I know, from opening during the day and looking like an eye.

So a day's eye.

Those little white ones that grow in your yard.

You'll see in the morning and evening, they have closed and they stay closed overnight and then open during the day because they're pollinated by bees.

So they want to be open during the day.

Flowers that are pollinated by bats would be open at night.

And they might specifically open at night and only at night so that they didn't leave that nectar resource out to other organisms during the day.

Bat pollinated flowers will also have a strong smell.

So a musky smell is just a strong smell.

Usually it can be really fruity, maybe even a little grossly fruity or more animalistic.

But many of these bats might be eating fruits as well.

So they might be out in search of fruit.

So musky smell is a little bit vague.

It's hard to describe, but it's a strong smell and often it's got a sweetness to it.

So here are some bats and bat pollinated flowers.

I love this one in the corner, just covered in pollen with its little hairy body.

So bat pollinated flowers tend to be light in color so that they can be really reflective.

Here we have some white flowers with some green to them.

They also want to get that pollen out there so that when a bat comes in and visits that flower, the first thing that happens to it is it gets covered in pollen.

So we tend to have these large anthers sticking out.

We've even lost a lot of the other floral parts here.

We're attracting them with these kind of an inflorescence or a flower that's almost entirely made up of anthers.

And we have the same thing going on here where our anthers are really extruding out there to be the first thing that gets in contact with that bat.

And then the stigma would be here to also hopefully pick up pollen from the bat as it comes in.

Here we see a bat visiting this almost kind of tubular shaped flower.

It's big and open, unlike something that would be pollinated by a bird that would be a more narrow tube.

You might also see these kind of like large flat flowers.

I think this one's on a saguaro cactus.

So we have the nectar resource, which would be deep in here.

And so the bat can kind of land a little bit, grab on and then dip its tongue in there to try to get to the nectar and then get its little face covered in all this pollen.

Like this one here.