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May 18, 2012 | 5
A hundred million years ago, everything looked quite different. There were dinosaurs on land and gigantic creatures in the sea, and the continents were arranged quite differently. But one thing would be familiar to the modern eye: pollination. Recently, scientists found pollen grains on tiny insects preserved in amber from the Cretaceous period, providing the oldest known record of pollination.
Today, pollination is all around us. Over 80 percent of plant species depend on insects to transfer little nuggets of pollen from the male to female parts of flowers for reproduction. Many flowers have specialized parts to attract insects to them, and many insects have corresponding hairs adapted to gathering and carrying pollen. But it wasn't always that way—pollination has evolved over millions of years, and probably began at the beginning of the Cretaceous, perhaps even with insects like these.
The tiny insects here belong to a group called thrips—critters with fringed wings that are less than two millimeters long. Six of the little bugs were preserved in the amber that the researchers found, and on them hundreds of pollen grains, probably from a cycad or ginkgo tree. The work was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Finding these thrips sheds some light on how early insects were pollinating plants, and why. The thrips had little hairs on their bodies, perfect for collecting pollen, but they didn't evolve those hairs just to help plants out. Instead, the researchers think, the species fed their larvae with the pollen, and those larvae probably lived in the female parts of ginkgo and cycad plants. So the insects would go to the male parts of the plants, gather the pollen grains, and bring them back to their larvae on the female organs. In the process, some of that pollen fertilized the trees, setting off a chain of evolutionary adaptations in insects and flowers that continues to this day.
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5 Comments
Add CommentThere wasn't always flowers; was there always these insects, and what did they eat before the flowers came into being? Did the insects evolve to accommodate the flower because they realized the flower was a good source of food, or did the flower evolve because the plant realized how to use the insects to "go forth and populate the world"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo understand how it is possible for a four legged animal to evolve into a two legged winged flying animal with all intermediate stages benefiting the ability of the organism to survive or the chicken and egg story of insect or flower a must read is Richard Dawkin's book The Blind Watchmaker explains it brilliantly.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNote I believe in intelligent design as a PROPERTY of the universe not as belonging to a separate deity. Basically an atheist who believes in the miracle of the creation.
Very interesting...nature is amazing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCertainly the genetic algorithm must appear intelligent to a non-mathematician, but having explored it using computers it is amazing to discover how simple and how powerful it is. And the entire basis for its power is its simplicity. It really represents the only algorithm you need to explain everything about life except existence.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is an excellent example of the origin of mutualistic symbiosis, in which two or more different, usually distantly related species benefit each other. A fine living example is to be found in certain tropical and subtropical bat species, which visit the blossoms of particular trees to get necter that the trees produce. In the process, the bats pick up, on their fur, pollen from the blossoms, then unknowingly transfer it to the next tree visited. These relationships are usually very species-specific (one bat species visits one tree species). In anthropomorphic terms, the bats don't "care" about pollinating trees---they want only to fill their stomachs. The trees don't "care" if the bats starve, as long as pollination occurs. But by evolving this MUTUALISTIC relationship, both species, bat and tree, benefit. The bats are fed, and the trees reproduce with greater genetic variation as a result of sexual reproduction made possible by the hungry bats. Just one seeming miracle in the long evolution of life!
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