Pollination and Floral Ecology is the most comprehensive single-volume reference to all aspects of pollination biology--and the first fully up-to-date resource of its kind to appear in decades. This beautifully illustrated book describes how flowers use colors, shapes, and scents to advertise themselves; how they offer pollen and nectar as rewards; and how they share complex interactions with beetles, birds, bats, bees, and other creatures. The ecology of these interactions is covered in depth, including the timing and patterning of flowering, competition among flowering plants to attract certain visitors and deter others, and the many ways plants and animals can cheat each other.
Pollination and Floral Ecology pays special attention to the prevalence of specialization and generalization in animal-flower interactions, and examines how a lack of distinction between casual visitors and true pollinators can produce misleading conclusions about flower evolution and animal-flower mutualism. This one-of-a-kind reference also gives insights into the vital pollination services that animals provide to crops and native flora, and sets these issues in the context of today's global pollination crisis.
Preface vii Acknowledgments ix Part I: Essentials of Flower Design and Function Chapter 1 Why Pollination Is Interesting 3 Chapter 2 Floral Design and Function 11 Chapter 3 Pollination, Mating, and Reproduction in Plants 55 Chapter 4 Evolution of Flowers, Pollination, and Plant Diversity 88 Part II Floral Advertisements and Floral Rewards Chapter 5 Advertisements 1: Visual Signals and Floral Color 105 Chapter 6 Advertisements 2: Olfactory Signals 134 Chapter 7 Rewards 1: The Biology of Pollen 154 Chapter 8 Rewards 2: The Biology of Nectar 190 Chapter 9 Other Floral Rewards 221 Chapter 10 Rewards and Costs: The Environmental Economics of Pollination 234 Part III Pollination Syndromes? Chapter 11 Types of Flower Visitors: Syndromes, Constancy, and Effectiveness 261 Chapter 12 Generalist Flowers and Generalist Visitors 288 Chapter 13 Pollination by Flies 304 Chapter 14 Pollination by Butterflies and Moths 322 Chapter 15 Pollination by Birds 337 Chapter 16 Pollination by Bats 356 Chapter 17 Pollination by Nonflying Vertebrates and Other Oddities 370 Chapter 18 Pollination by Bees 378 Chapter 19 Wind and Water: Abiotic Pollination 418 Chapter 20 Syndromes and Webs: Specialists and Generalists 434 Part IV Floral Ecology Chapter 21 The Timing and Patterning of Flowering 483 Chapter 22 Living with Other Flowers: Competition and Pollination Ecology 503 Chapter 23 Cheating by Flowers: Cheating the Visitors and Cheating Other Flowers 524 Chapter 24 Flower Visitors as Cheats and the Plants' Responses 542 Chapter 25 The Interactions of Pollination and Herbivory 554 Chapter 26 Pollination Using Florivores: From Brood Site Mutualism to Active Pollination 565 Chapter 27 Pollination in Different Habitats 575 Chapter 28 The Pollination of Crops 605 Chapter 29 The Global Pollination Crisis 620 Appendix 639 Glossary 643 References 663 Subject Index 751 Index of Animal Genera 768 Index of Plant Genera 771
Pat Willmer is professor of zoology at the University of St. Andrews. She has published extensively on pollination biology in leading scientific journals. Her books include "Environmental Physiology of Animals".
This is an impressive and valuable contribution to pollination ecology, floral evolution, plant biology, and entomology. The book is extremely up-to-date. I am convinced it will become the central reference in the field and remain so for many years. A pleasure to read.--W. Scott Armbruster, University of Portsmouth and University of Alaska, Fairbanks
"There has not been a treatment of pollination biology as extensive as this since Faegri and van der Pijl's classic book was first published in the 1960s. Willmer does an amazing job catching the reader up on the literature of the last forty years while keeping the material accessible to the novice biologist. This will become the bible for floral biologists studying plant-pollinator interactions."--Charles B. Fenster, University of Maryland