2023-12-20 05:11:22
Between flowers and bees, it’s a love story that has lasted for a hundred million years. But recently, the romance has taken a bit of a hit. While the former depend on the latter to reproduce and the foragers cannot live without nectar, this virtuous cycle ended up breaking down. “In an environment depleted in pollinating insects, flowering plants that develop in agricultural crops tend to free themselves from pollinators,” states a CNRS study published this Wednesday, December 20 in the journal “New Phytologist”.
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According to the authors, they began to… self-fertilize! The finding is surprising, but not so surprising given that 80% of these species are capable of seeding themselves, without the help of foragers. But thanks to this study, biologists from the University of Montpellier (Hérault) observed a much more worrying phenomenon for biodiversity: thanks to the disappearance of bees and other bumblebees, wild flowers would tend… to shrink.
#wild #flowers #shrink