Can anyone speak about the capacity of mosquitoes themselves as pollinators? I know they spend much more time eating nectar than blood (which only the females do when they are breeding). I wondered if anyone happened to know how effective they are as pollinators.
Also, could it be helpful to consider pollinators or insects as a "keystone group"? Removing the occupiers of a "niche" could certainly effect the whole system. -----Original Message----- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto:ECOLOG- [email protected]] On Behalf Of James Crants Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2009 10:00 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] Mosquitoes as keystone species? > > > I agree with you the rest of your post, except to say that not all > mosquitoes are human-feeders, and not all are WNV-vectors (only those > that bite both birds and mammals are). > > > Fewer bees probably does equate with fewer flowering plants. In the same spirit, I should add that many flowering plants are long- lived perennials, many use pollinators other than bees (possibly in addition to bees), and many are capable of pollinating themselves or producing seeds asexually (and, if you want to call clonal growth "reproduction," a whole lot of them do that, too). So their abundances cannot be expected to track bee abundances very closely. On the other hand, if flowering plant abundance IS strongly correlated with bee abundance across space or time in your study system, it could be the bee populations that are tracking the plant populations. This is what makes ecology so challenging!
