Summary

This is Episode 90 and it’s all about the importance of birds as plant pollinators.

If I had to use only one word for the topic of this episode, it would be ornithophily. The definition of ornithophily is “the pollination of flowers by birds.”

Today, I’ll be focusing mostly on the ecological relationships between plants and the birds that pollinate them. Another way to look at all of this would be through the lens of evolution—the fascinating ways that plants and birds have co-evolved with respect to pollination.

I’ll make another podcast episode, at some point, about bird and plant co-evolution. We’ll touch on it today, but the main focus is ecology.

Pollination ecology is actually an entire subdiscipline that many scientists have dedicated their careers to studying. It’s really interesting stuff.

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Research Citations‍

• Birds as pollinators of Australian plants
• Influence of plant reproductive systems on the evolution of hummingbird pollination
• Extinction of the Hawaiian Avifauna Resulted in a Change of Pollinators for the ieie, Freycinetia arborea
• Cascading Effects of Bird Functional Extinction Reduce Pollination and Plant Density
• Phylogeny, biogeography, and recurrent evolution of divergent bill types in the nectar-stealing flowerpiercers‍
  

Photos

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Attributions

• New Holland Honeyeater sounds (Xeno Canto recording XC860056)