- Butterfly
- Bee
- Dragonfly?
- Other arthropods
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Dragonflies are pollinators?? wowie
IDK, I’m not an expert. Maybe they just land on flowers randomly?
It depends on the flowers being pollinated.
I won’t try to claim that ants are the best pollinators but they are often overlooked. Ants also bank, disperse and plant seeds.
Here are over 1000 examples:
Cape fynbos sp often rely on ants to bury seeds. Post-fire recovery is either resprouting, or seedlings. Some shed when cones / flowers burst open after fire, and some from the ant’s buried cache.
Also beetles and flies. Random example of a monkey beetle covered in blue pollen https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/323719781
Partial to wasps
It depends on the plant involved - see pollination syndrome.
There are terms for pollination by insects (generally), beetles, carrion (and dung) beetles, bees, wasps, ants, flies, moths, butterflies, hawk moths (and nocturnal leps), and thrips; among non-insect arthropods mites; among non-arthropod animals humans, mammals, bats, elephants$, birds, snails and slugs, and lizards; and among non-biotic factors wind and water.
$ elephophily seems to be a joke/hoax/myth. The idea is that elephants tramping round the jungle transfer pollen on their feet between Rafflesia flowers.
Moths are often overlooked
Flies are actually a hugely underestimated one, at least in certain habitats. I think the habitat and kind of plants are the most important factors that will skew the kinds of answers you get.
I have been involved in a pollinator paper in an high altitude habitat (3000m+) in the ecuadorian Andes.. with our method (coloured pan traps mimicking flowers and thus attracting pollinators) over 70% of pollinators belonged to the group of flies. There are some constraints in this collection method, but generally dipterans seem to be of higher importance in high altitude habitats then hymenopterans, as other studies suggest as well.
I did not look up, if anything has been done there, but I lived in a deserty region (Egypt) for a while and had the feeling, diptera where much more common there as well compared to bees and wasps, so they might be more important in such habitats as well ( just a guess based on anecdotes!)
In other habitats, hymenopterans are for sure leading pollinators.
Hard to say what’s the “best” when the world wouldn’t be the same without all of them! The only contest is which is my favorite XD
So I’ll just leave the fun fact that there are pollinating mosquitoes
Speaking of flies I was tagging an ant as a pollinator and this sequence of photos cracked me up because the fly … it’s just so BIG.
Click through the photos in order and you’ll see what I mean.
I don’t think it’s been published, but I remember seeing a great undergrad poster showing that Opiliones (harvestmen) are scuttling around in grasslands by night and actually transfer a significant quantity of Solidago (goldenrod) pollen while nibbling on the inflorescences.
I will agree that flies, wasps, beetles, moths, and butterflies all need some pollinator love. Not so sure about ants, dragonflies or harvestmen - educate me.
However, Bees have evolved to use pollen as a protein source for their progeny, unlike wasps that rely on meat. Because bees learn which flowers provide reliable rewards, they show strong fidelity to a single plant species during a foraging trip, which makes them exceptionally effective pollinators - pollen transfer to the same species. Insects have hairs called setae that detect touch, vibration, airflow, temperature, and chemical cues, giving them detailed awareness of their surroundings. In bees, these setae have further evolved into branched, plumose hairs that dramatically increase surface area for pollen collection. During flight, bees generate a stronger and more persistent electrostatic charge than most insects, and this charge actively attracts pollen to their plumose hairs. Bees then use highly coordinated grooming behaviors — sweeping pollen from their head, thorax, and abdomen with their legs — and pack it into specialized structures like the scopa or corbicula. This active grooming and packing not only consolidates pollen for transport but also dislodges and redistributes grains across their body, increasing the likelihood of pollen transfer between flowers.
Not forgetting there are quite a few vertebrate pollinators as well, birds, bats, monkeys and even geckos.
The most prolific pollinator of all is not even alive. Nearly all conifers, the trees that blanket a large percentage of the Earth’s land surface are mostly wind pollinated.
Prolific may not necessarily mean better. The wind has high volume but low precision - wind pollination is an energy‑intensive, low‑precision strategy - plants must produce enormous quantities of pollen because the delivery system is random. Bees are low volume but high precision which might explain why most flowering plants evolved to rely on bees rather than the wind.
At the risk of taking this off-topic, I will point out that many flowering plants have evolved to depend on birds for pollination.
Feeling the urge to shoutout flies that are inadvertent pollinators. ie they don’t want to be; the plants just trick them XD by smelling like rotting meat or something
But aren’t the plants “tricking” the bees in the same way?
If a creature plays a role in pollination occurring it’s a pollinator.
I once had someone accuse an ant of “stealing pollen” … just because it was an ant visiting a flower to collect and eat pollen and not a bee. This is ant slander.