pollen

Adults eschew such prey and typically feed on nectar or pollen, though some adults do not eat at all.

The trace you got from your motel vic's face is pollen.

When a beetle arrives at the flower, the flower closes around it for about 24 hours so that the beetle becomes covered with pollen.

For example, monarch caterpillars feeding on milkweed plants near Bt cornfields will eat some corn pollen that has fallen on the milkweed leaves.

Laboratory studies indicate that caterpillars can die from eating Bt pollen.

In contrast, Paul Colinvaux has offered a counterargument based on the analysis of pollen in lake sediments dating to the last ice age.

Pollen, a powdery substance, which is produced by flowering plants and contains male reproductive cells, is usually carried from plant to plant by insects or birds, but some plants rely on the wind to carry their pollen.

Wind pollination is often seen as being primitive and wasteful in costly pollen and yet it is surprisingly common, especially in higher latitudes.

Wind is very good at moving pollen a long way; pollen can be blown for hundreds of kilometers, and only birds can get pollen anywhere near as far.

The drawback is that wind is obviously unspecific as to where it takes the pollen.

For the relatively few dominant tree species that make up temperate forests, where there are many individuals of the same species within pollen range, this is quite a safe gamble.

These are at best a waste and at worst an impediment to the transfer of pollen in the air.

Wind pollination does, of course, require a lot of pollen.

There are various adaptations to help as much of the pollen go as far as possible.

Most deciduous wind-pollinated trees (which shed their leaves every fall) produce their pollen in the spring while the branches are bare of leaves to reduce the surrounding surfaces that “compete" with the stigmas (the part of the flower that receives the pollen) for pollen.

Pollen produced higher in the top branches is likely to go farther: it is windier (and gustier) and the pollen can be blown farther before hitting the ground.

Moreover, dangling catkins like hazel hold the pollen in until the wind is strong enough to bend them, ensuring that pollen is only shed into the air when the wind is blowing hard.

Pollen is shed primarily when the air is dry to prevent too much sticking to wet surfaces or being knocked out of the air by rain.

Despite these adaptations, much of the pollen fails to leave the top branches, and only between 0.5 percent and 40 percent gets more than 100 meters away from the parent.

Indeed, pollen can travel many thousands of kilometers at high altitudes.

Since all this pollen is floating around in the air, it is no wonder that wind-pollinated trees are a major source of allergies.

Once the pollen has been snatched by the wind, the fate of the pollen is obviously up to the vagaries of the wind, but not everything is left to chance.

Windborne pollen is dry, rounded, smooth, and generally smaller than that of insect-pollinated plants.

But stigmas create turbulence, which slows the air speed around them and may help pollen stick to them.

The passage of wind-blown tree pollen is also not hindered by such barriers, and the seeds of many plants may be carried back and forth on animals.

These are actually made by pouring thin, finely controlled streams of colored sands or pulverized vegetable and mineral substances, pollen, and flowers in precise patterns on the ground.

Grasshoppers feeding on flowers indirectly block pollination and the production of seeds by destroying the corolla or the stigma, which receives the pollen grains and on which the pollen germinates.

Features such as color, scent and shape attract pollinators, as does the reward in the flower, the pollen or the nectar, that feeds the pollinator.