Staggered Flowering Times Increase Likelihood of Pollination

Biological Strategy

Plants

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Cooperate/Compete Between Different Species

From parasitism to mutualisms, there are endless interactions between organisms in nature. Interactions between species that lead to a negative outcome for one species are known as competition. Cooperation occurs when organisms work together for the benefit of each organism or species. While competition often occurs over resources or mates, the more biologists have begun to look for examples of cooperation in nature, the more they have found. For example, around 90% of plants have a beneficial partnership with fungi. Fungi provide the plant with nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, in exchange for sugars from the plant.

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Cooperate Within an Ecosystem

An ecosystem is a community of organisms (plants, animals, and microbes) interacting with one another and the nonliving components of their environment (such as air, water, and mineral soil). This interaction can be passive or active, and can cooperatively enhance the functioning of the ecosystem as a whole. For cooperation to contribute to maintaining communities within an ecosystem, it must be beneficial to at least some members of the community. Cooperation consists of symbiotic relationships, such as mutualism (in which two or more species in an ecosystem benefit) and commensalism (in which one species benefits and the effect on others is neutral). An example of a commensal relationship is that between bromeliad plants and trees: bromeliads live on trees without harming them. Bromeliads have mutualistic relationships with other species, including insects, frogs, and worms. The plants capture water in their base, forming a pond that these organisms join. The nutrients that these organisms excrete in their droppings nourish the bromeliad.

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Plants

Phylum Plantae (“plants”): Angiosperms, gymnosperms, green algae, and more

Plants have evolved by using special structures within their cells to harness energy directly from sunlight. There are currently over 350,000 known species of plants which include angiosperms (flowering trees and plants), gymnosperms (conifers, Gingkos, and others), ferns, hornworts, liverworts, mosses, and green algae. While most get energy through the process of photosynthesis, some are partially carnivores, feeding on the bodies of insects, and others are plant parasites, feeding entirely off of other plants. Plants reproduce through fruits, seeds, spores, and even asexually. They evolved around 500 million years ago and can now be found on every continent worldwide.

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Staggered flowering times among ericad peatland plants increase likelihood of successful pollination by reducing competition for scarce pollinators.

Peatland ecosystems are often characterized by having few pollinator species, as well as small pollinator population sizes. This affects plants by decreasing the rate of pollination, as fewer individuals are available to move pollen between plants, which decreases the number of plant offspring produced. In order to counteract the low numbers of both pollinator species and pollinator population sizes, plant species belonging to the ericad family have developed an interesting strategy. They stagger their flowering times, so they don’t overlap. This increases the rate of successful pollination, as there are fewer flowers to visit at any one time, thus reducing competition for pollinators, and ensuring that pollen is transferred to another member of the species. Differences in cold tolerance determine the sequential flowering times. The higher a plant’s cold tolerance, the sooner after a frost it can start to produce pollen. These differences result in different flowering times, reduced competition for pollinators, more targeted pollination, and ultimately increased rate of successful reproduction for the plants.

This summary was contributed by Thomas McAuley-Biasi.

Image: Tim Lenz /

Image: Mirjana Chamberlain-Vucic /

Last Updated March 23, 2020

References

“Because these plants are visited by the same hymenopteran pollinators, it would be most advantageous for their peak flowering times to be non-overlapping. The probability of flower pollination would be maximized for each species by this temporal separation of peak flowering.” (Reader, 1975:1304-1305)

Journal article

Competitive relationships of some bog ericads for major insect pollinators

Can. J. Bot. | 05/06/1975 | R. J. Reader

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Reference

Journal article

Flower cold hardiness: a potential determinant of the flowering sequence exhibited by bog ericads

Can. J. Bot. | 01/04/1979 | R. J. Reader

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