Investigating pollen capture, production, and size strategies in wind-pollinated flowering plants The flowering plants (angiosperms) have evolved a wide diversity of pollination strategies, from complex interactions with specialized animal pollinators to strategies that are entirely abiotic, relying on fluid currents like wind or water to transport pollen from stamen to stigma. Compared to animal pollination, abiotic strategies like wind pollination have long been considered inefficient, evolving when animal pollination becomes unreliable. Traits commonly associated with wind-pollinated plants are thought to reflect this apparent inefficiency and low probability of successful pollen transfer. Compared to animal-pollinated species, which tend to have large showy flowers design to attract animal pollinators, wind-pollinated plants tend to make many small, inconspicuous flowers that produce large volumes of pollen and often have just one ovule. These traits may represent a strategy to mitigate inevitable pollen losses – or they may represent innovative adaptations to maximize pollen capture in a unique pollination system. For example, packaging just one ovule per flower might not be because the probability of multiple grains landing on a given stigma is unusually low. Instead, having many small, relatively inexpensive flowers may allow wind-pollinated plants to maximize their pollen capture by maximizing the area they sample in space, at minimal floral costs. Similarly, pollen production strategies in wind pollinated plants may not simply reflect low probability of pollen capture by stigmas. Instead, these may be the result of a complex balance of selection on pollen size and number imposed by transport through wind and subsequent competition between pollen grains for limited ovules. In my research, I’m broadly interested in understanding the strategies wind-pollinated plants use to facilitate successful pollination from both male and female fitness perspectives, despite the inherent stochasticity in wind pollination.
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