Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here. Bees are not doing well since the mid two thousand's colony collapse disorder has been taking out the world's most famous plant pollinator all over the world. Bees pollinate one third of the plants we eat, from oranges to almonds, a service worth some a hundred and sixty eight billion dollars a year, by the way, and their rapid disappearance is worrying farmers worldwide.
But what if there's a secret army of pollinators sneaking around the plants we rely on most It could be good news for our food security, or it could be a neutral factor if these insects are susceptible to the
same or similar pressures as bees. A study published in May of twenty and the journal Biology Letters has found that moths play a much bigger part in pollinating plants than anybody imagined, possibly visiting a bigger variety of plant species than bees and doing it under the cover of darkness.
Scientists didn't just realize overnight that moths pollinate plants. The problem was much of the research was limited to a few specific types of moths, that obviously spend a lot of their time rooting around in flowers, like hawk moths, which have extraordinarily long tongues like fourteen inches that's thirty six centimeters long, used for getting it hard to reach
nectar reserves within a flower. However, over the last decade, investigations into how moths as a group contribute to the process of pollination found that your average moth tongue can be a really effective tool for moving pollen from plant to plant. This knowledge led the studies authors to turn an eye to the rarely studied settling moths, which sit low and close to flowers and hide out in sheltered
spots during the day. We spoke by email with these studies lead author Richard Walton of the University College London Department of Geography. He said, our research has for the first time compared moth pollination networks with those of day flying pollinators such as bees and hover flies, to help us understand and illustrate the wide ranging plant preferences we
discovered moths to have in an agricultural setting. We also found that malls were carrying most pollen from the flowers they visited on their furry bodies, which means the means of pollen transport from flower to flower by moths is very similar to bees and hover flies, which also transport
most of the pollen on their bodies. Many social bees, like bumble bees and honey bees, visit lots of different types of flowers, but they also tend to target certain favorite plants that they know will provide plenty of their favorite kinds of pollen and nectar. As a result, some plant species get less be attention than others. Walton said, Solitary bees can often be more specialized visiting one type of plant, while hover flies often visit flowers with a
certain shape. We found that moths visit many different species of plant with a few different types of flower shape. If daytime pollinators do not visit a particular plant species often, but moth species do, and this results in pollination, this increases the chance that this plant would survive for another generation. So, because moths are a bit less picky than daytime pollinators but still get the pollination job done, plants not preferred
by bees persist. Maintaining a diverse population of plants is essential to maintaining a stable and resilient ecosystem. That can weather threats like climate change or urbanization. Conversely, with plenty of plants to feed on, moths themselves can continue being an important food source for birds, bats, and other insects.
The research team observed and collected daytime pollinators as well as nocturnal moths around farm ponds in the United Kingdom and found moth food webs were often comparable to those of daytime pollinators in complexity, and in some instances had greater complexity. Walton said moths are likely providing a kind of resilience or back up to the food webs of daytime pollinators. If a certain species or number of species of bee or butterfly disappears from the landscape, moths could
potentially fill in that pollination gap. Taking this a step further, it's also significant because moth populations are facing severe declines across the globe. As we realize that they are important contributors to the pollination process, it becomes even more important to protect moth populations because we might be placing ourselves
at risk. The researchers found moths were visiting plants belonging to families that are important to humans as a source of foods, like apples, strawberries, pears, peaches, beans, and peas. Walton said this has exciting implications for moths being involved in crop pollination. It would help us to move past seeing moths as merely pests, but it's important contributors to our own livelihoods. Today's episode was written by Jesselyn Shields and produced by Tyler Clay. For more and listen lots
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