2023-06-04 05:30:05
RLet’s face it: until now, we haven’t paid much attention to weevils. These little beetles with trunks seemed to play only a sad role on the vast stage of life: that of infesting our old packages of flour.
This disastrous error, an article published on May 25 in the review Peer Community in Ecology just repaired it dramatically. Not only does it remind us that, behind this generic term, there are no less than 60,000 species of insects – in other words, as many as all the vertebrates (birds, fish, reptiles, mammals, etc.) put together, but, end of a vast study conducted by teams from the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (Inrae), the Center for International Cooperation in Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD) and Field Museum in Chicago (Illinois), it reveals the importance of this group of beetles in the pollination of tropical plants.
This function, scientists themselves seemed largely unaware of. “Most pollination experts do not consider weevils to be important players, and specialists on these beetles do not see pollination as an essential function of the group, insists Bruno de Medeiros, professor assistant at the Field Museum. Many important facts escape us because of our preconceptions. »
Thus weevils fell into the category of crop pests, those who had ruined the American cotton industry in the 1890s. Often much smaller than bees and butterflies, they also have the bad taste of work at dusk. Less visible, then.
Some emblematic cases had however been reported, and even widely used. The oil palm, for example, was only able to spread out of Africa – for better or for worse – when the weevil Elaeidobius kamerunicus has been identified and in turn introduced throughout the tropics. Same observation for Carlodovica palmata : without its associated insect, the plant cannot reproduce, and that’s the end of braided hats with its fibers, especially the authentic Panama hats.
Very specialized relationships
For several years, Bruno de Medeiros’ team has been studying pollinating weevils on the American continent. Julien Haran (CIRAD) and Gaël Kergoat (INRAE) did the same in Africa. They decided to join their efforts. Rather than dive randomly into “weevil” diversity, they focused on so-called “brood” pollination.
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