Alexander Dietz

Humans cultivate plants since thousands of years. While the focus of breeding and cultivating crops was always to increase their yield, the focus of cultivating flowers mainly is to enhance their visual appearance. However, insect pollinators use the flower appearance to choose flowers to visit and effectively collect food resources from. Insects’ visual systems differ greatly from our own, so who is to say they will like, what we find appealing?  Native flowers also coevolved with native pollinators for millions of years. How much do we impact this codependent system, if we introduce flowers with drastically changed appearances?

 

Bumblebees and hawkmoths are both insect pollinators with similar visual systems, yet very different foraging strategies and food needs. Both are mainly visual motivated animals, which therefore make for excellent representatives for many pollinator species.

I want to investigate whether these animals prefer native or ornamental plants, what cues are most important for these preferences, if they forage more efficient on native or ornamental flowers and what nectar rewards their frequently visited flowers actually provide.

 

I hope to find a consensus of what makes a good pollinator food source and to establish a link between human culture and pollinator conservation.